Download Making minority voices heard: Benefits of

Making minority voices heard: Benefits of highlighting social
diversity in negotiation settings
Anna-Lena Majkovic & Richard Crisp
Centre for the Study of Group Processes, University of Kent
Negotiation processes represent a daily phenomenon. Employees negotiate with their
supervisor about extended coffee breaks, children with their parents about a potential
increase of their pocket money or husbands with their wives about keeping their
beloved 20-year old armchair.
In all those above listed settings, a variety of professional opinions and
social/cultural backgrounds of participants are likely to appear on the negotiation
table. As a matter of fact, sustained globalization does not only foster the exchange of
economic and social goods, but also the challenge of cross-cultural understanding and
agreement.
The most all-encompassing definition of negotiation has been put forward by
Walton and McKersie (1965): negotiation means the “deliberate interaction of two or
more complex social units which are attempting to define or redefine the terms of
their interdependence” (p. 3). Negotiation is required when conflicts arise and the
parties cannot draw on existing procedures to resolve the conflict and whenever the
use of aggression aims to be avoided (Lewicki & Litterer, 1985).
Different academic disciplines try to shed light on negotiation. Not only
researchers within the field of economy, law or organisational relations are involved,
but also sociologists and psychologists offer their expertise. The main theoretical and
empirical focus has so far been on negotiation processes and outcomes. Which factors
need to be considered to ensure successful negotiation outcomes? Which behavioural
tactics will enable people to negotiation more successfully? Apart from economic
measures of negotiation behaviour, which focus on products of the negotiation and
assume individual rationality, social psychological investigations highlight both
process and outcome variables of negotiation. As negotiation cannot simply be
depicted as purely rational events offering a limited set of behavioural options, social
perceptions and social evaluations represent an essential element of scientific research
on negotiation. In this respect, psychological studies on negotiation focused on
motivational, behavioural and cognitive components of the actual negotiation process,
such as prosocial orientation, uncertainty perceptions or strategic behaviours. In fact,
only few studies (e.g., Beersma & De Dreu, 2005) mirrored events and social
processes taking place prior or post negotiations.
However, especially psychological evaluations and anticipations before the
actual negotiation event offer a plethora of scientific insights. People participating in
negotiations are likely to feel uncertain about the progression of the discussions
(Galinsky & Mussweiler, 2001). Debaters often do not have exact information about
the opponent’s dispute intentions. They certainly expect to deal with diverse or
opponent interests, which may even threaten one’s own ambitions and agendas. For
instance, negotiation within cross-cultural or highly social diverse contexts may evoke
the impression that the process of finding common agreements implies enduring
debates and lower chances of defending own priorities. As Thompson and Herbec
(1995) state: “Probably one of the most pervasive and pernicious perceptions that
characterize individual’s beliefs about negotiations is the incompatibility perception.”
(p. 839) The incompatibility perception indicates the belief that one’s own interests
are completely opposite to the other party’s goals. Success accomplished by the
opponent party automatically puts one’s own victory at risk.
In our research, we examine the positive concept of diversity within negotiations as an
essential strategy to enhance successful negotiation performance. Diversity can refer
to differences related to social/cultural factors (e.g., ethnicity, gender, age) as well as
individual factors (e.g., personality, family background) (Miville et al. 1999).
Moreover, diversity refers to a diverse spectrum of represented opinions and interests.
Participants, who enter discussion feeling rather insecure in anticipation of a highly
diverse group, are likely to draw back on negative encounters with diverse working
groups. They might recall harsh discussions, in which agreements were only found by
investigating extreme endeavour on both sites. Especially, those participants are likely
to profit from engaging in the following pre-negotiation trainings: If participants of
negotiations are encouraged to value the advantages of entering diverse negotiation
settings (e.g, broader perspectives, more creative working groups), the likelihood of
cooperative negotiation outcomes will be increased.
In the present studies, interventions were implemented that involved the
mental simulation of negotiation in socially diverse settings. The simulation of social
diversity is argued to create a more cognitively flexible mindset and greater readiness
for cooperation and innovation among debaters, and in particular a focus on minority
perspectives. Using experimental and observational designs and measures of cognitive
flexibility, conflict strategies and minority versus majority message processing, we
observed support for the hypotheses. The findings suggest that imagined social
diversity tasks may contribute to the development of beneficial negotiation outcomes
and encourage debaters to examine more closely minority positions.