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Communication and Interaction Patterns
Linda L. Putnam*
Editors’ Note: Certainly you know how to communicate; you’re a negotiator, after all. But what if you’re trying to decide whether or how to threaten to walk away? How can you communicate to your best possible advantage at some other particularly sensitive moment? Putnam examines three different areas of communications research—negotiation strategies, language analysis and process patterns—to explain that how we say things is often as important as what we say.
This chapter is republished from the same editors’ Negotiator’s Fieldbook (American Bar Assoc. 2006). We appreciate the ABA’s courtesy in agreeing to this republication. Although this chapter was not updated for the NDR, we believe it continues to be a unique and valuable resource. Some formatting has been updated; the text of the chapter and the author’s bio are unaltered.
Negotiation depends on some form of verbal or nonverbal communication. In particular, negotiators use communication to exchange proposals, manage perceived incompatibilities, and work out the nature of a bargaining relationship. Even early studies that employed the Prisoner’s Dilemma game relied on a cue system of choices that conveyed implicit messages between negotiators.[1] Scholars who observed actual negotiations recognized the importance of communication and even described types of messages that negotiators exchanged.[2] This early work suggests that communication functions to make bargaining both tacit and explicit. Communication scholars, however, entered the arena of negotiation much later than did social psychologists, legal researchers, and political scientists.[3] During the last twenty-five years, however, scholars have produced a wealth of knowledge about communication processes, knowledge that falls into three broad categories—negotiation strategies and tactics, language and discourse analyses, and process patterns and phases.
These three arenas of research underscore the importance of communication as an impromptu code to signal intentions, respond to the other party’s moves, exchange information, coordinate outcomes, and manage the dynamic tensions between cooperation and competition.[4] These dynamic tensions are rooted in mixed-motive interactions in which negotiators often walk tightropes between trust and distrust, escalation and exploitation, and concealing and revealing information. These antithetical poles simultaneously push and pull on the negotiation process. Communication aids in managing the shifts between them; that is, negotiators through their interactions can alter the course of bargaining from an initially cooperative endeavor to a highly competitive one or vice versa. Communication patterns also help negotiators transform their deliberations through redefining the issues, altering interpretations of events, and managing identity and face concerns. In effect, bargainers use social interaction to navigate between extreme opposites, a process that Rubin labels as ‘the quintessential illustration of interdependence in negotiation.’[5] Overall, then, communication aids in enacting the very nature of negotiation as an ongoing process rooted in tensions between cooperation and competition.
Studies of communication and negotiation employ a number of research designs that link interaction to bargaining outcomes. In some studies, communication directly influences negotiated outcomes whereas in other research, communication acts as a mediator or moderator of input variables, such as a bargainer’s goals, orientations, motivations, gender, and ethnicity.[6] Other investigations, especially ones that examine the development of negotiation over time, treat communication as the bargaining process itself. In like manner, communication research relies on a variety of outcomes, including whether the parties reach an agreement or a stalemate, if they achieve joint or individual gain, and if the negotiation ends up distributive or integrative. Studies of distributive and integrative negotiation also examine the communication strategies or tactics that contribute to these bargaining outcomes.
Negotiation Strategies and Tactics
Early work on communication and negotiation drew from researchers who observed and categorized the frequencies of bargaining strategies and tactics.[7] A negotiation strategy refers to an approach or a broad plan that encompasses a series of moves while tactics are the specific messages that enact the strategies. For example, competitiveness is a strategy often characterized by the use of such tactics as bluffs, exaggerated demands, and commitment statements. The research on negotiation strategies and tactics falls into six arenas: communication styles, distributive and integrative tactics, information management, arguments and reason giving, and generating proposals and concessions.
Communication Styles
Broad negotiation strategies are similar to what communication scholars call styles. However, a style is an automatic or habitual form of behavior while a strategy is often tailored consciously to achieve particular ends. A common style difference in the negotiation literature is tough versus soft bargaining. Tough bargainers open with extreme offers, give few and small concessions, concede slowly,....
For full contents please purchase The Negotiator’s Desk Reference.
Endnotes
*(from The Negotiator’s Fieldbook, ABA 2006) Linda L. Putnam is the George T. and Gladys H. Abell Professor in the Department of Communication at Texas A & M University. Her current research interests include negotiation, environmental conflict, gender studies, and organizational conflict. She is the co-editor of The SAGE Handbook of Organizational Discourse (2004), The New Handbook of Organizational Communication (2001), and Communication and Negotiation (1992). She is the 1993 recipient of the Charles H. Woolbert Research Award for innovative research in communication, the 1999 Distinguished Scholar Award from the National Communication Association, and the 2005 Steven H. Chaffee Career Productivity Award. She has received funding for her research from the National Science Foundation, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.
[1] Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict (1960).
[2] Edward Peters, Strategy and Tactics in Labor Negotiations (1955); Richard E. Walton & Robert B. McKersie, A Behavioral Theory of Labor Negotiations: An Analysis of a Social Interaction System (1965); Schelling, supra note 1.
[3] For early state-of-the-art reviews, see Linda L. Putnam & Marshall Scott Poole, Conflict and Negotiation, in Handbook of Organizational Communication 549-99 (Fredric M. Jablin, et al., eds., 1987); Linda L. Putnam & Tricia S. Jones, The Role of Communication in Bargaining, 8 Human Communication Research 262-80 (1982).
[4] Jennifer A. Chatman, et al., Integrating Communication and Negotiation Research, 3 Research on Negotiation in Organizations (Max. H. Bazerman, et al., eds., 1991).
[5] Jeffrey Z. Rubin, Negotiation: An Introduction to Some Issues and Themes, 27 American Behavioral Scientist 135-47 (1983).
[6] Chatman, et al., Integrating Communication and Negotiation Research, supra note 4; Laurie R. Weingart, et al., Conflict Management and Communication Processes, in The Psychology of Conflict and Conflict Management in Organizations, SIOP Frontier Series (Carsten K. W. De Dreu & Michele J. Gelfand eds., forthcoming).
[7] P. Thomas Hopmann & Clarence Walcott, The Impact of International Conflict and Détente on Bargaining in Arms Control Negotiations: An Experimental Analysis, 2 International Interactions 189-206 (1976); Dean G. Pruitt & Steven A. Lewis, Development of Integrative Solutions in Bilateral Negotiation, 31 Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 621 (1975).
This chapter is republished from the same editors’ Negotiator’s Fieldbook (American Bar Assoc. 2006). We appreciate the ABA’s courtesy in agreeing to this republication. Although this chapter was not updated for the NDR, we believe it continues to be a unique and valuable resource. Some formatting has been updated; the text of the chapter and the author’s bio are unaltered.
Negotiation depends on some form of verbal or nonverbal communication. In particular, negotiators use communication to exchange proposals, manage perceived incompatibilities, and work out the nature of a bargaining relationship. Even early studies that employed the Prisoner’s Dilemma game relied on a cue system of choices that conveyed implicit messages between negotiators.[1] Scholars who observed actual negotiations recognized the importance of communication and even described types of messages that negotiators exchanged.[2] This early work suggests that communication functions to make bargaining both tacit and explicit. Communication scholars, however, entered the arena of negotiation much later than did social psychologists, legal researchers, and political scientists.[3] During the last twenty-five years, however, scholars have produced a wealth of knowledge about communication processes, knowledge that falls into three broad categories—negotiation strategies and tactics, language and discourse analyses, and process patterns and phases.
These three arenas of research underscore the importance of communication as an impromptu code to signal intentions, respond to the other party’s moves, exchange information, coordinate outcomes, and manage the dynamic tensions between cooperation and competition.[4] These dynamic tensions are rooted in mixed-motive interactions in which negotiators often walk tightropes between trust and distrust, escalation and exploitation, and concealing and revealing information. These antithetical poles simultaneously push and pull on the negotiation process. Communication aids in managing the shifts between them; that is, negotiators through their interactions can alter the course of bargaining from an initially cooperative endeavor to a highly competitive one or vice versa. Communication patterns also help negotiators transform their deliberations through redefining the issues, altering interpretations of events, and managing identity and face concerns. In effect, bargainers use social interaction to navigate between extreme opposites, a process that Rubin labels as ‘the quintessential illustration of interdependence in negotiation.’[5] Overall, then, communication aids in enacting the very nature of negotiation as an ongoing process rooted in tensions between cooperation and competition.
Studies of communication and negotiation employ a number of research designs that link interaction to bargaining outcomes. In some studies, communication directly influences negotiated outcomes whereas in other research, communication acts as a mediator or moderator of input variables, such as a bargainer’s goals, orientations, motivations, gender, and ethnicity.[6] Other investigations, especially ones that examine the development of negotiation over time, treat communication as the bargaining process itself. In like manner, communication research relies on a variety of outcomes, including whether the parties reach an agreement or a stalemate, if they achieve joint or individual gain, and if the negotiation ends up distributive or integrative. Studies of distributive and integrative negotiation also examine the communication strategies or tactics that contribute to these bargaining outcomes.
Negotiation Strategies and Tactics
Early work on communication and negotiation drew from researchers who observed and categorized the frequencies of bargaining strategies and tactics.[7] A negotiation strategy refers to an approach or a broad plan that encompasses a series of moves while tactics are the specific messages that enact the strategies. For example, competitiveness is a strategy often characterized by the use of such tactics as bluffs, exaggerated demands, and commitment statements. The research on negotiation strategies and tactics falls into six arenas: communication styles, distributive and integrative tactics, information management, arguments and reason giving, and generating proposals and concessions.
Communication Styles
Broad negotiation strategies are similar to what communication scholars call styles. However, a style is an automatic or habitual form of behavior while a strategy is often tailored consciously to achieve particular ends. A common style difference in the negotiation literature is tough versus soft bargaining. Tough bargainers open with extreme offers, give few and small concessions, concede slowly,....
For full contents please purchase The Negotiator’s Desk Reference.
Endnotes
*(from The Negotiator’s Fieldbook, ABA 2006) Linda L. Putnam is the George T. and Gladys H. Abell Professor in the Department of Communication at Texas A & M University. Her current research interests include negotiation, environmental conflict, gender studies, and organizational conflict. She is the co-editor of The SAGE Handbook of Organizational Discourse (2004), The New Handbook of Organizational Communication (2001), and Communication and Negotiation (1992). She is the 1993 recipient of the Charles H. Woolbert Research Award for innovative research in communication, the 1999 Distinguished Scholar Award from the National Communication Association, and the 2005 Steven H. Chaffee Career Productivity Award. She has received funding for her research from the National Science Foundation, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.
[1] Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict (1960).
[2] Edward Peters, Strategy and Tactics in Labor Negotiations (1955); Richard E. Walton & Robert B. McKersie, A Behavioral Theory of Labor Negotiations: An Analysis of a Social Interaction System (1965); Schelling, supra note 1.
[3] For early state-of-the-art reviews, see Linda L. Putnam & Marshall Scott Poole, Conflict and Negotiation, in Handbook of Organizational Communication 549-99 (Fredric M. Jablin, et al., eds., 1987); Linda L. Putnam & Tricia S. Jones, The Role of Communication in Bargaining, 8 Human Communication Research 262-80 (1982).
[4] Jennifer A. Chatman, et al., Integrating Communication and Negotiation Research, 3 Research on Negotiation in Organizations (Max. H. Bazerman, et al., eds., 1991).
[5] Jeffrey Z. Rubin, Negotiation: An Introduction to Some Issues and Themes, 27 American Behavioral Scientist 135-47 (1983).
[6] Chatman, et al., Integrating Communication and Negotiation Research, supra note 4; Laurie R. Weingart, et al., Conflict Management and Communication Processes, in The Psychology of Conflict and Conflict Management in Organizations, SIOP Frontier Series (Carsten K. W. De Dreu & Michele J. Gelfand eds., forthcoming).
[7] P. Thomas Hopmann & Clarence Walcott, The Impact of International Conflict and Détente on Bargaining in Arms Control Negotiations: An Experimental Analysis, 2 International Interactions 189-206 (1976); Dean G. Pruitt & Steven A. Lewis, Development of Integrative Solutions in Bilateral Negotiation, 31 Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 621 (1975).