5 21

Roloff 5 21


Jerks, Continued.

Sometimes, a situation prompts jer-like behavior.

Motivations:

1. Competition – Competitive people want victories, not ties or losses.

2 Types:

1) Absolute Competition: Wants a victory, regardless how slim the margin
2) Proportional Competition: This person is only happy if the margin of victory is large.

Given a choice of a 300 to 200 dollar margin, or a 10 to 1 dollar margin for victory, the proportionally competitive person takes the 10 to 1 margin, though they benefit more from the other deal.

Competitive people think that everyone is as competitive as they are.

When a competitive person negotiates with a cooperative person, the cooperative person becomes more competitive, which confirms the worldview of the competitive person.

People become more competitive when the results are made public. Roloff’s grad school experience – made first paper grades public, and in an icebreaker, made all students GREs and undergrad GPAs known to each other.

Competition can be instilled by structuring the situation, it isn’t a necessarily a personality trait.

2. Cooperation – interdependency, if I do well so do you, and if I do poorly so do you.

3. Individualism – people who are competitive are cognitively simple, individualists are cognitively complex. An individualist wants to do well and doesn’t care what happens to others. An individualist is not concerned with relative outcomes. The individualists will do what’s best for them, if they need to act competitively or cooperatively, they will. They are high Macs. Never assume an individualist is loyal, he or she will be loyal to him or herself.

Situations can make people individualistic. When there are scarce resources, people act in an individualistic way. During the last gas shortage, gasoline was topped off to be sure they had a full tank created artificial shortages, but people acted individualistically and topped off anyway.
Altruists – Want good things for others regardless what happens to them.

People act altruistically when they enter into a negotiation in which the outcomes mean more to the other party than to them. Gratitude will not be a factor for altruists; they won’t care whether they are thanked. People who want recognition and ego strokes for giving time or money are not really altruistic; people who give because the think it is the right thing to do are the first to quit, because the organizations are often run by ego-driven people.

Aggressive – A person who wants to hurt another, regardless what happens to them. This is also situational. When someone has been humiliated, they will act aggressively. These people will engage in negotiations that have lose-lose outcomes. These people will leave a job for another that pays less just to cripple the company they leave. A woman sued a company after working for a jerk who treated her poorly; they started by asking for a settlement. They go to a database of judgments and make an offer slightly above the average. They always say no, though the odds of success in court are small. The plaintiff’s attorney will be prompted by the plaintiff to ask questions the court won’t allow. The effort is made by the plaintiff to humiliate the boss but gets no money.

Face-related behavior – Brown – created a face-saving theory of negotiation. What makes us engage in fights is that someone humiliates us. All people want to believe that they are competent and strong, or at least no believe that they are incompetent or weak. When someone treats us like we are incompetent or weak, we are motivated to restore our face. The other party acts like a jerk, one can begin to act like a jerk. A low offer prompts efforts to show that the person to whom the offer was made is strong, usually they become difficult.

2 ways of looking at face:

1) Before negotiation – prior to a negotiation, you engage in behavior that shows that you are a force to be reckoned with, that you are tough. This can backfire. 2 months before a negotiations between CAT and Union, they ran ads asking for non-union labor that would cross the picket line. This galvanized the Union, and got them fired up. Sometimes, the expectancies of the constituencies are lowered on purpose, so that even a small victory is considered a big win. “Self-handicapping” = under-promise and over-deliver.
2) During the negotiation – A non-negotiable demand will set off face saving, as will threats, insults. The propensity to take things personally will lead some to lose face. Coercion is humiliating, it can lead to face-saving. “Always let them leave with their dignity” will prevent irrational face-saving measures.


3. Role – some roles put us in the position of acting like a jerk. Roloff was a jerk as chair of the program, stopped being a jerk when he was no longer chair.

Boundary Role Conflict – boundary roles mean that you have a lot of contact with people outside and inside the organization, e.g. salespeople or any people dealing with the public. People in boundary roles are stressed out, hate their jobs, and want to stop dealing with clients. Boundary Roles create torn loyalties; someone in that role has to deal with two groups of insane people.


Union Reps -------------------------------------------------------Management

Also accountable to:
- Rank and file -Stockholders


Reps come to like each other by the end of a negotiation, and start to complain about their constituents.

When constituencies were asked how to evaluate a rep, what was the #1 thing they wanted? It was obedience. The next was to be tough. The quality of the agreement was third.

How do constituencies control the rep?
1) Restrict his or her authority.
2) Increase accountability – force them to come back and explain why they did what they did.
3) They control outcomes (rewards and punishments)
4) Monitor negotiation
5) Provide feedback – it doesn’t matter what feedback is given, it makes the rep tougher; if you are doing a good job, you assume it is because of toughness, but if you are doing a bad job, you get tougher in response
6) Support – Study: When would elected representatives be most loyal to the wishes of constituencies, when they win by a large or small margin? Small margins are more loyal, large margins act independently.


What do reps do to get more independence from constituents?

1) Invite a small, select group of rank and file to watch the negotiation – these are usually those who would be supportive.
2) Provide constant information to constituency – bullet pointed memos
3) Try to negotiate in private, unwatched by constituency (some states have sunshine laws, which dictate that negotiation must be announced), like on a golf course or bar.


How can I use my constituency against my opponent?

1) “My hands are tied” – my constituency will never agree to this. Studies suggest that this only works if your offer is above their resistance point. Car dealers who have to talk to their managers are using this strategy.

2) Contrast – contrasting ones view with his or her constituency

1 – constituency is tough, opponent acts the way the constituency wants,
results in deadlock
2 – constituency is soft, negotiator is soft – no concession is given
3 – constituency is tough, negotiator is soft – negotiator should claim to be soft reasonable, and compare himself to his constituency, say he’ll be replaced by crazies like his constituency.
4 – constituency is soft, negotiator is tough –

Third Party Assistance

Arbitration – binding vs. non-binding

In binding arbitration, the parties are legally bound to follow the arbitrator’s settlement.

In non-binding, the arbitrators tell the parties what their likely outcome is and make a recommendation, but the parties can still go to court (the law in IL is that the parties must first go to non-binding arbitration, and if one party agrees and the other doesn’t, the party that doesn’t must pay the fees of the arbitrators).

Grievance and Interest Arbitration – Grievance arbitration is worked into collective bargaining, disputes between employees and management are settled by arbitrators.

In interest, there is no contract, and an arbitrator decides. This is typically used in public-sector negotiation, nurse, firefighters, law-enforcement, air traffic controllers, situations in which going on strike would not serve the public interest.

The theory was that if arbitration was forced, a settlement negotiated in good faith would be reached. The theory assumed the hastening effect would result, but a chilling effect was what resulted, they slowed down concession-making, and a narcotic effect, in which people became addicted to negotiation. Arbitration bias resulted. Usually, management and labor and the American Arbitration Association would each submit a list, and one from each list would serve. Because arbitrators publish their results, their bias can be predicted, so there is no need to fear arbitration (there are usually pro-labor or pro-management arbitrators, none are neutral_

Biases:

1) Precedent
2) Weak-person bias – arbitrators side with the weaker of the two parties, regardless who is right, an underdog effect (average age of arbitrators is 60, they are aging but predictable so the same arbitrators are often chosen).
3) Split the difference – arbitrators like to create a split-the-difference compromise. Final offer arbitration means that the arbitrator has to choose between one of the two final offers, which prevents parties from starting with an unreasonably high offer. People think that 80% think like them, so the are less afraid of final offer arbitration than they should be. Unions manipulated it by logrolling, they figured out that there were things the company wouldn’t give, so they are extremely reasonable on some issues, but asked for what they knew they’d never get. Management would look unreasonable, and Unions would win the final offer arbitration. Final Offer arbitration yields bad agreements, and Unions undercut their systems. They figured out how to adjust; arbitrators looked at each agreement issue by issue and picked the best from each.


Arbitration was started during WWI, to settle disputes in the railroad industry, since strikes would be detrimental to the war effort. The threat of arbitration is a deterrent, an incentive to make a settlement.


Mediation

Trying to get two parties to agree and suggesting solutions. Not binding.

Mediators must convince parties to comply with their decisions. Most arbitrators are trained to look passive and indifferent, but mediators must have social skills. Mediators tend to be like negotiators, they represent society’s interests or they represent people who are not present but are affected by the agreement (Divorce mediators argue on behalf of the children). Mediators must sometimes engage in tough negotiation, but in other cases be an integrative bargainer. Credibility comes from the fact that the mediator is gaining and losing nothing from the outcome. In last MLB strike, the mediator threatened to reveal the negotiation tactics each side used if they didn’t settle in 90 days, and they settled in 90 days.




Facilitation


Emerged out of mediation. Content and process mediation, content said what the agreement should look like, process pointed to a way to settle. Content mediators would tell parties what an agreement should be, but process mediators wouldn’t judge the solution as long as it was properly negotiated. Process mediators became facilitators. These people will tell parties how to talk. “If you reached this agreement together, it must be good.”

Versions:

Filley – amounts to group decision making, enforce negotiation steps.

Separate the parties, and transfer messages – “Shuttle diplomacy” Kissinger did between Cairo and Tel Aviv. An intermediary. If one party doesn’t know what they are doing, the mediator can advise them without parties losing face. Downsides: it takes longer to reach an agreement, and parties have no idea what the other side is told, and research suggests that these agreements are short-lived.


Single Text Method (aka, The Delphi Method) – combination of content and process. Mythology of the single text method goes along with the Camp David accords. Carter did not allow the Egyptians and Isrealis to directly negotiat; he put parties at opposite sides of the camp, and came in with a sample accord. “Here’s the document, tell me what is wrong with it” He took their feedback, revised the documents, and went through a series of iterations in which the Israelis and Egyptians never met. When they were about to settle, Carter allowed them to speak to each other, and they reached a settlement. This keeps that parties focused on the agreement, not on each other, and there are parts of the agreement that both sides can claim as their own.

Often, Third Party Intervention doesn’t work unless the parties have felt a lot of pain, and often won’t involve a third party if they haven’t experienced an adequate level of pain.


The Journal of Counseling suggests that marital counseling helps, but 83% divorce rate results when the counseling ends, because a third party/neutral ground are no longer available.