Electronic Negotiation: A Teaching Tool for Encouraging Student Self‐Reflection

Abstract

As the amount of negotiation taking place electronically increases, the responsibility of negotiation instructors to prepare students to successfully operate in electronic environments grows. We believe that skills related to electronic negotiation — like many other negotiation skills — are best taught by providing students opportunities to gain firsthand experience followed by self‐reflection. For the past five years, we have used an electronic negotiation exercise to allow students to personally experience the complexities associated with negotiations completed exclusively over the Internet. Further, with the use of e‐mail and instant messaging, a powerful record emerges: a complete transcript of the negotiation encounter. After describing the preparation and structure of this exercise, we explain how to harness the power of this vehicle to lead students to significant insights through self‐reflective activities.

Transcending the Classroom: A Practical Guide to Remote Role Plays in Teaching International Negotiation

“…All in all, these comments correlate with the research findings on communication and electronic negotiations (Drolet and Morris ; Morris et al. ; Thompson and Nadler ; Holtom and Kenworthy‐U'Ren ; Galin et al. ) that suggest that remote negotiations involve more task‐focused communication, less relationship building, less rapport, fewer positive emotions, and less trust development than are found in face‐to‐face negotiations.…”

“…All in all, these comments correlate with the research findings on communication and electronic negotiations (Drolet and Morris 2000;Morris et al 2002;Thompson and Nadler 2002;Holtom and Kenworthy-U'Ren 2006;Galin et al 2007) that suggest that remote negotiations involve more taskfocused communication, less relationship building, less rapport, fewer positive emotions, and less trust development than are found in face-to-face negotiations. Through first-hand exposure to e-negotiations, the students gained valuable insights about the process of electronic negotiation that they would not have been able to acquire through in-class exercises.…”

Using “Shocks and Rumors” to Teach Adaptive Thinking

“…They give students the framework within which they can learn to assess and reassess each party's best alternative to a negotiated agreement (BATNA), bottom line, goals, issues, interests, priorities, and constraints, so that they might adjust specific parts of their negotiation strategy in real time. Because dynamic exercises require students to critically examine their initial assessments and plans, they also help students to develop increased situational awareness (Watkins 2007) and self‐awareness (Holtom and Kenworthy‐U'Ren 2006). Further, teaching students to systematically reanalyze negotiation situations within a rational framework may help them to avoid well‐documented decision‐making errors (e.g., escalation of commitment) when at the negotiation table (Bazerman 2005).…”

Emotion in Group Decision and Negotiation

“…Electronically mediated communication (EMC) has become a central part of organizational life (Hedlund et al 1998;Baltes et al 2002;Hinds and Kiesler 2002), and also negotiations are increasingly conducted via electronic media instead of traditional face-to-face (f2f) discussions (Loewenstein et al 2005;Thompson 2005;Holtom and Kenworthy-U'Ren 2006). Whereas first approaches to support negotiations are rooted in decision-related aspects for individual negotiators, the particular characteristics of negotiations called for the development of negotiationspecific tailored support (Kersten and Lai 2007).…”