Gender Salience in Electronic Negotiations

Abstract

There is ample empirical evidence for the impact of gender in face-to-face negotiations. In electronic negotiations, the use of electronic negotiation support systems (eNS) implies important differences to face-to-face communication settings: (1) eNSs permit among other functions, revising, storing, processing, and transmitting information and (2) Computer-mediated communication reduces the transmission of interpersonal and social context cues. In this study, we use a controlled laboratory experiment to analyse how the negotiators' gender, the gender-composition of negotiation dyads as well as the negotiators' prior relationship affect negotiation behaviour in electronic negotiations. Our results clearly indicate stereotypical behaviour of men and women in electronic negotiations: Overall, women give more information about their personal interests and needs and tend to be more yielding while men, on the contrary, tend to be more persuasive and competitive. When negotiating with a friend, men show significantly more integrative negotiation behaviour while women's behaviour does not change to a great extent. Finally, we find the gender-specific adaptation of negotiators to their counterpart to be relatively low indicating less gender salience in electronic negotiations.

Differences are Different: Examining the Effects of Communication Media on the Impacts of Racial and Gender Diversity in Decision-Making Teams

“…Further, women tend to focus their communication on maintaining good intra-team relationships (Gilligan, 1992;Maznevski, 1994), often through consensus-building (Elsass & Graves, 1997;Hess, Fuller, & Mathew, 2006) and the creation of joint gains (Koeszegi, Pesendorfer, & Stolz 2006).…”

Gender, competitiveness, and unethical negotiation strategies

“…In these cases, men fight and take on foes that cause harm to others who are "defenseless" or weaker and show tenderness and protection to those they consider subordinate. We find these trends in the literature where men become more cooperative when negotiating with women versus negotiating with other males since perhaps men are generally socialized to take care of women (Calhoun and Smith, 1999;Koeszegi et al, 2006;Vigen, 2007). While there have been many studies emphasizing the differences in cooperative-competitive orientation between men and women, there is a body of evidence showing that these differences are non-existent or insignificant at best (Lewicki et al, 1994).…”

“…This encompasses "really talking" (Kolb and Coolidge, 1991, p. 266) and carefully listening to understand both extrinsic and intrinsic needs of the other party. Supporting this proposition, Koeszegi et al (2006) found that women's negotiation behavior is not affected by whether they know their counterpart or not. However, this pattern is not found in men.…”

Relationship in electronic negotiations: Tracking behavior over time

“…Secondly, it has to be considered that other potential influences such as gender e.g., (Koeszegi, Pesendorfer, and Stolz, 2006), negotiator's preferences for specific styles e.g., (Kilmann and Thomas, 1977), cognitive biases e.g., (Neale and Bazerman, 1992), system and communication mode characteristics e.g., etc. Although we have conducted a pilot study with follow-up-interviews to make the simulation as realistic as possible, there are limits in laboratory experiments.…”