The Impact Of Power Imbalance And Social Motives On Negotiation Process And Outcome

How to reach agreements of high joint outcomes is the focus of negotiation researchers. Power imbalance and social motives are very important variables that influence integrative negotiations. On the basis of "The Abstract Hypothesis" of power and "A Motivated Information-processing Model" of negotiation, the authors suggest that it is important to consider the interactive effects of power difference and social motive on negotiation processes and outcomes. Three laboratory simulation experiments were designed in this paper to explore these effects by using two classic negotiation tasks and several different manipulations of power and social motive.In the first experiment, the differences of negotiation behavior and outcomes between negotiators with an equal balance of power (high-high, low-low, no-no) and negotiators with an unequal power balance were tested when they had a prosocial or proself motivation. The results showed that negotiators with unequal power reached agreements of higher joint gain than that of negotiators with equal power. Both unequal power dyads and high-high power dyads obtained higher joint benefit than low-low power dyads. Social motives significantly influenced the negotiator behavior. Those who prosocially motivated negotiators engaged in more problem solving than those who egoistically motivated negotiators. Moreover, there were significant interactive effects of power difference and social motive on negotiation behavior.In the second experiment, we proposed that the role and social motive had interactive effects on negotiation processes and outcomes. Results partially supported our hypothesis. The prosocial motivation of recruiters shaped the quality of negotiation processes and outcomes more than the prosocial motivation of candidates. Pairs consisting of one prosocial recruiter and one candidate received no instructions about social motive reached higher joint outcomes and engaged in more problem solving than pairs consisting of two parties both received no instructions about social motive. Furthermore, results of multiple regression analysis indicated that recruiters' social motives significantly predicted the integrativeness of negotiation agreements, even after controlling for recruiters' aspirations and recruiters' positive affects which had been considered to have effect on joint outcomes in previous researches.Basing on the second experiment, the authors added epistemic motivation (manipulated by holding negotiators process accountability or not) as an independent variable and measured fixed-pie perceptions as another dependent variable in the third experiment. The results indicated that dyads consisting of two prosocial negotiators achieved higher joint outcomes and engaged in more problem solving when their epistemic motivation was high rather than low. Although there was neither main effect of power (role) nor main effect of epistemic motivation on fixed-pie perceptions for individual-level outcomes, dyads including one prosocial recruiter held less fixed-pie perceptions than dyads including one proself recruiter for dyad-level outcomes.Finally, a new theory of integrative negotiation theory was proposed after general discussion.