INDIVIDUAL ARTICLE REVIEW

BU7581 NegotiationTheory& Practice 2019/2020

Individual Article Review

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Hostage negotiation

Article Review

Introduction

The statements used by negotiators such as “This is the best I can do” etc. are some of the persuasive tools that can convince the other party or counterparts to agree on something without making any concession. This research highlighted the question of why some negotiators accept the ultimatum at face value and why others ignore ultimatum and continue to negotiate (Ma et al. 2019). This topic is chosen to interpret and define the role of negotiation theories in determining the quality judgments made by negotiators. This article embeds a deep insight into the choice of mindset by defining the temperaments of negotiators.

Research Description

Negotiators often elicit some concessions from their counterparts by ultimatums. This research highlights why some negotiators leave the bargaining table or concede to ultimatum while others ignore ultimatum and they continue with negotiations (Ma et al. 2019). In effect, some hypothesis were formulated such as:

Hypothesis 1a. Negotiators in a choice mindset would believe that there is more room to negotiate compared to those in a non-choice mindset.

Hypothesis 1b. Upon receiving ultimatums, negotiators in a choice mindset would be more willing to persist compared to those in a non-choice mindset.

Hypothesis 2. The effect of the choice mindset on greater willingness to persist following ultimatums would be mediated by a greater perceived negotiation room.

Hypothesis 3. Negotiators in a choice mindset would achieve better negotiation outcomes than those in the non-choice mindset

Six studies were examined to know the role of choice minds, taking into account the identification of choice mindset as an intervention to enhance the persistence and improvement of negotiation outcomes. Survey method was used to research the main idea, where a survey was posted on the online Chinese survey panel. Out of 800 participants, 831 participants completed their study (Ma et al. 2019). After that, it was tested that either choice manipulation has an effect on the willingness to ignore the ultimatum and persist in the negotiation or not. A mediation model was used to process model 4 with 5000 increased corrected bootstrap samples (Ma et al. 2019). There are both dependent and independent variables, where dependent variable was the willingness to persist and choice was independent variable.

Discussion

Taking into account the consistency of hypothesis that were made in the beginning, studies asserted that those who thought about the constraints that were faced in a negotiation and compared to those who were at the side of choice of mindset, the later were more willing to play a persistent role in a negotiation even after the issuance of ultimatum by their counterpart. Also, the negotiators in choice mindset are more towards ignoring the ultimatum and continue with the negotiations. This behavior is found to be adoptive because sometimes, ultimatums are guided by strong persuasive devices. Studies highlighted that when people are given the choice mindset to enter a negotiation, they are more towards the belief that there is more space for negotiation, as compared to the people who are in no-choice mindset (Ma et al. 2019). The findings of the study indicate that there is a general choice of priming manipulation that is unrelated to the negotiations at hand and has the power to shape the perceived negotiation room of people.

Conclusion

The research demonstrated the effect of choice mindset on the negotiation cognitions, outcomes and behaviors. It was highlighted that as the choice mindset lead people to ascribe greater agency to actors, it would lead to an increased negotiation persistence. The overall findings asserted that adopting choice mindset would be partially beneficial when a negotiator is dealing with some tough negotiation situations.

References

Ma, A., Yang, Y., & Savani, K. (2019). “Take it or leave it!” A choice mindset leads to greater persistence and better outcomes in negotiations. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 153, 1-12.