Negotiations

Section: Process losses and process gains during negotiations (DFG project)

‘Process losses and process gains during negotiations’ is a research project in collaboration with Leuphana University Lüneburg (Prof. Dr. Roman Trötschel und Marco Warsitzka, M.A.). Within the scope of this project the role of social interaction in bargaining situations will be analyzed. Former negotiation research suggests that negotiating generally leads to better outcomes for both parties. However, group research shows that social interaction can often lead to process losses. Against this background, several variables (such as the characteristics of the bargaining situation, negotiation targets and cognitive frames) will be manipulated in order to investigate conditions under which process losses vs. process gains can be observed. For this purpose, real negotiation groups will be compared to nominal groups that do not interact socially, thereby combining group research and negotiation research. Significant differences between real and nominal groups indicate either a process loss or a process gain.