Handbook of Principles of Organizational Behavior - Soltanieh ...

336 LAURIE R. WEINGART AND KAREN A. JEHN
or costs, can be used to merely inform the other party (a collaborative application) or to
substantiate one ’s position in an attempt to persuade the other party (a less collaborative
approach). Sharing information about preferences for a given issue (i.e. what you want
and why you should have it your way) can be more confrontational in nature and does not
necessarily improve the quality of an agreement (Weingart, Hyder, and Prietula, 1996 ).
In contrast, exchanging information about priorities across issues (i.e. the relative importance
of the issues to a negotiator and why) represents an effective, collaborative type of
information exchange as it involves multiple issues and can facilitate tradeoffs across issues
(Pruitt and Lewis, 1975 ; Thompson, 1991 ).
Use packaging and tradeoffs. It is not uncommon for discussions of multi - issue confl icts to
progress one issue at a time – with the group resolving one issue before moving to the
next. The problem with this approach is that tradeoffs cannot be made across issues.
Tradeoffs occur when both parties make concessions on less important issues (to themselves)
to gain advantage on another (Pruitt, 1981 ). This tactic is effective at reconciling
interests when parties have differing priorities on issues when each party gains more than
they lose in the tradeoff.
When team members are unwilling to share this information (because they fear the
other party might not reciprocate, putting themselves at an information disadvantage),
effective tradeoffs can be identifi ed by exchanging multi - issue offers (i.e. packaging). When
issues are packaged together, instead of being considered independently and sequentially,
it is easier to arrange trades or concessions as negotiators search for packages that are
mutually beneficial (Thompson, Mannix, and Bazerman, 1988 ; Weingart et al., 1993 ).
Discovering tradeoffs through the exchange of packaged offers is a more indirect method
in that team members must infer other ’s priorities by stated package preferences (Adair,
Weingart, and Brett, 2007 ).
Work to break the chain of conflict escalation. One of the most difficult aspects of a successful
negotiation is trying to balance the cooperative and competitive components of mixed ­
motive negotiations (Lax and Sebenius, 1986 ). Once a conflict takes on a competitive
or personal tone (i.e. becomes a relationship conflict), it is very difficult to shift it to a
more cooperative task - focused interaction, as the conflict can escalate into a destructive
cycle. One way to break the chain of contentious behavior is to respond with integrative,
collaborative responses (Brett, Shapiro, and Lytle, 1998 ; Putnam and Jones, 1982 ).
Collaboration is then more likely to continue when that collaborative behavior is reciprocated
than when it is not (Weingart, Prietula, Hyder, and Genovese, 1999 ). Another
method for breaking conflict spirals is explicitly labeling the contentious reciprocation as
unproductive during the interaction. When a conflict is contentious and one party identifies
the process as such, the other party would be hesitant to continue in a contentious
manner without appearing irrational. Directly responding to a threat by identifying it
( “Are you threatening me? ” ) demonstrates that the threat was not effective and may cause
the party making the threat to shift tactics or refocus onto the process (Brett et al., 1998 ).
Another component of conflict that encourages a negative escalation cycle is emotion
(see Chapter 8 ). When people begin to take negative comments about their task performance
or ideas personally, the conflict becomes more emotional and task confl ict can
escalate to become relationship confl ict. Relationship conflict of this type is best handled
by mediation by an outside party to sort through the negative emotions and ascribe more