Teaching Negotiation Theory and Skills Over the Internet

Abstract

Negotiating on-line is becoming an increasingly common phenomenon in the workplace. The medium of the Internet also offers promising, opportunities for negotiation educators to reach out to participants that might otherwise be unable to attend a seminar. The authors used the Internet to teach negotiation theory and skills during a seven-week seminar that was conducted completely over the World Wide Web. This experiment revealed several advantages and difficulties likely to arise in the conduct of "distance learning'' for topics in negotiation. The authors reflect on how they would organise the seminar differently, should they do it again, and offer suggestions far others organizing courses using the Internet.In recent years, there has been an increased interest in using the Internet as a medium for teaching negotiation skills. The advantages of electronic mail, (i.e., people can read or send mail whenever it is most convenient for them, and a person can easily send the same message to several people) are especially well suited for learning environments in which the participants are dispersed around the world, have complex work schedules, and are unable to take even a few days from work to attend a professional seminar. How- Robert B. McKersie is Sloan Fellows Professor of Management at the Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology's Sloan School of Management, Room E52-589, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139. Nils Fonstad is also at the Sloan School, as a doctoral student in Information Technologies and Organization Studies. He is working on the processes of multi-party negotiation and coordination within the context of organization studies, and the rote of information technologies in those processes.

How intragroup dynamics affect behavior in intergroup conflict: The role of group norms, prototypicality, and need to belong

“…Given the pervasiveness of negotiation as a form of social interaction and the increasing popularity of information technologies as a communication medium, the question of how representatives negotiate via computer-mediated communication is itself of great theoretical and practical importance (cf. McKersie & Fonstad, 1997). Nevertheless, some caution is needed when generalizing the results to other settings.…”

What Other's Disappointment May Do to Selfish People: Emotion and Social Value Orientation in a Negotiation Context

“…At the very least, our findings pertain to computer-mediated negotiations. Given the pervasiveness of negotiation as a form of social interaction and the increasing popularity of modern information technologies in communication, the question of how individuals react to each other's emotions in computer-mediated communication is itself of great theoretical and practical importance (McGrath & Hollingshead, 1994;McKersie & Fonstad, 1997;Moore, Kurtzberg, Thompson, & Morris, 1999). However, considering that this paradigm has yielded results that have been replicated in face-to-face settings (see Sinaceur & Tiedens, 2006), we have no reason to suspect that our findings are restricted to the domain of computer-mediated interaction.…”

Case Study

“…Today, there are many methods to train negotiation, including simulations, discussions, assemblies, videos and internet negotiations (Bobot 2007;Gardner 1993;McKersie & Fonstad 1997;Lempereur 2002;Weiss 2005;Manwaring 2006;Wheeler 2006), but simulations are among the most prevalent teaching methods. Generally, simulations model a complex process or reality.…”