Conflict and Cooperation

Objective standards refer to comparisons a negotiator might use to justify the fairness of his offer. They can be ascribed to the distributive negotiation strategy, since the intent is to influence the counterpart to make concessions. 
One example would be an employer of a restaurant offering a potential employee a minimum wage salary, justifying it with the salary of the other employees. 

The first offer effect describes how an outcome is more favourable for those who make fist offer. This seems to be explainable by the anchoring effect in bargaining strategies. First offers, whether in a single or multiple issue negotiation, strongly influence the ultimate outcome, because the counterpart ‘‘anchors” on the opening offer. The underlying psychological reason for the first offer advantage is that counterparts insufficiently adjust for the strategic, self-interested positioning of the first offer. 

The first strategy is explicit information exchange. It consists of an exchange of questions and answers which generate insight into negotiator's interests and priorities. It is the simplest route to joint gains. 
The second stategy is the implicit information exchange. The negotiators' offers and arguments reveal information about their underlying interests and priorities. 
The third strategy is the heuristic trial and error. Negotiators using this technique start the neotiation by proposing multi-issue offers that satisfy their high aspirations. A concession to a lower level of aspiration is made only when the counterpart has rejected all the proposals that the negotiator could make at the higher level of aspiration. When the negotiator’s multi-issue offer is rejected by the counterpart, who is probably responding with his own multi-issue offer reflecting his aspirations, the first negotiator, instead of conceding, reconfigures her initial multi-issue offer to see if the counterpart would be interested in a slightly different configuration, but one that also fulfills the negotiator’s aspirations. 

A study showed, that mimicking the counterpart's behavior leads to more insight, generating trust and the creation of value, as well as more claim of value (not at expense of counterpart--> what was created was claimed). (Mechanisms of reciprocity).

The fixed-pie error or bias is the faulty belief that the counterpart’s priorities and interests are completely and directly opposed to one’s own, when in fact, this is not necessarily true. (distributive thinking; integrative would be to expand the pie).

Example:
a married couple fighting during the divorce negotiation. While both think the other one wants to financially ruin them, they actually only want to get as fast as they can over with it.

The incompatability bias is the faulty belief that another person has opposing preferences to one’s own interests, when in fact, the other person is in complete agreement. E.g. other people have interest in same resource as oneself and that this is impossible/ incompatible

It was found that approximately 40% of negotiators fail to realize when their interests are perfectly compatible with others

The negotiation correlates of social motives are prosocial or cooperatively motivated negotiators. They try to maximize outcomes for themselves and others. They use more integrative negotiation strategies. 
Furthermore, there are pro-self negotiators, who use more distributive negotiation strategies. They have either individualistic motives, so they try to maximize gains for themselves alone, or competitive motives, meaning they aim at maximizing the difference between themselves and others.
 

When a conflict emerges from task-related issues, such as differing viewpoints regarding the goals of a work task, it can be defined as a task conflict.

When a conflict emerges from personality clashes and/ or emotionally charged interactions with others due to issues of a personal nature, it can be defined as a relationship conflict.

Process conflicts emerge from differing opinions regarding the procedures for completing a task, including how tasks should be performed, when and by whom.

Non-task organizational conflicts are issues, that are organizational in nature, but but not specific to a work task, such as disagreements over workplace policies, benefits and so on.

1. Task conflict: some individuals of a team want different methods for reaching a goal, e.g. having more environmental cars vs. having the fastest cars. A team of accountants and financial analysts may disagree over how to interpret and report the results of financial data since each member brings a unique perspective

2. Relationship conflict: one individual got sexual harassed at work by another person.

3. Process conflict: some individuals of a team want to assign a task to colleagues, who don’t see themselves as suitable. Or: If one technician uses a different process for quality control than another, there will be a significant impact to the overall ability to create consistent quality control within the organization

4. Non-task organizational conflict: an organization wants one day in casual outfits (e.g. Fridays), while many employees don’t like this idea. 

interpersonal sources: coworkers, supervisors, clients, costumers, patients
Limited ressources and opposing interests
clashing values, feelings of threat to one's ego and self-view
different interpretations of information

Stressors are linked to a variety of employee health and well-being outcomes (=strains). These are the factors which lead to strains in people. 

Strains are physical, psychological or behavioral outcomes of confrontation with stressors. 

The immediate response to interpersonal conflict are negative emotions, mostly anger, but also anxiety, depression or other emotions. (neg. emotions as part of adaptive response, they precede various forms of strains)

• initial reaction: anger and anxiety (negative emotions). 
• The more conflicts, the more more depression (cross-cultural); relationship and task conflicts correlate with a poorer well-being in private and public organizations.
• It has been found that intergroup conflicts and depression are espcially correlated for men.
• The emotions anger and anxiety can lead to conflict escalation. 
• Burnout as a state of emotional exhaustion and depersonalitzation
• Task, relationship and non-task organization conflicts correlate with less satisfaction

1. the more conflicts, the more depression

2. poor emotional well-being due to relationship and task conflicts

3. anger and anxiety (anger-->conflict escalation)

4. Burnout (state of emotional exhaustion and depersonalization, strain response)

5. less satisfaction

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When a conflict involves a superior, the subordinate person would try to inhibit/ supress their anger. Instead association with anxity, fear of being punished or fired as a result of the conflict.

Short-term physical strains are physical components of negative emotions, such as elevated heartbeat and blood-pressure. Sometimes headaches and stomach distress.

Long-term effects can be cardiovascualr diseases, increased risk of hypertension and increased ventricular mass, as well as somatic symptoms

One behavioral correlate of conflict can be accidents and injuries. Those can be behaviors which increase the likelihood of mishaps. The employee disregards proper saftey protocols or is distracted by stressors. Especially interpersonal conflicts are associated with workplace injuries and accidents. 

Another behavioral correlate can be withdrawal, either mental (daydreaming) or physical (turnover or absenteism) escape behavior. 

The third behavioral correlate is counterproductive work behavior, which is aimed at hurting the organization and/ or individuals who are part of it. It can be expressed in interpersonal aggression, sabotage and hostility. 

Firstly, there is the trait anxiety, which is the tendency to perceive situations as threatening ot conflictual. Secondly, a negative affectivity can also contribute to conflicts, especially in the form of counterproductive wirk behavior, depression and overal negative mood. These people are more sensitive to the environment and are therefore more likely to perceive conflicts. Thirdly, the trait anger is the tendency to perceive situations as provoking, so those people are more likely to be involved in conflicts. Fourthly, a type A personality tends to experince anger and frustration more often, these individuals are therefore also more likely to be involved in conflicts. Another mentioned trait is the locus of control. People with an external locus of control might be more prone to conflicts, since they evaluate conflict situations as uncontrollable and stressfull. People with an internal locus of control might be especially prone to relationship conflicts, due to the discrepancy between perceived and real control. 
Overmore, low conscientiousnes can lead to workplace aggression and conflict, while high agreeableness can lead to fewer conflict-provoking behavior.  

There are about 100 different mediation techniques, which can be categorized into 25 different strategies. For this paper, three main strategies were used (neutral, pressive, evaluative)

Assertive strategies seemed to be more effective for reaching agreement than non-assertive ones. 

Mediators are adviced to optain trust, be neutral, though some findings propose to not be neutral. Mediators are supposed to consider cultural differences, define the problem well, evaluate , improvise, control emotions and to not belief attorneys. 

Typical criteria are the partie's satisfaction with the process and the outcome, as well as the agreement rates.

The three strategies found were for one the neutral strategy, where the mediator stays neutral, keeps both sides talking and has no interest in the outcome or judges anything.
There are also two assertive strategies. One is the evaluative strategy, where the mediator points out strenghts and weeknesses of each party, advises and analyses, gives their opinion, asks, discusses and suggests. 
The other one is the pressive strategy, where the mediator takes the role of the devil's advocate and presses one or both sides to be direct, persistent and candid. 

The effectiveness of the assertive mediation strategies might be expained by the aspiration theory, which claims that both of these stratgies lower the aspirations of the parties concerning the outcomes, so that the disputant are more apt to move off their current positions, concede to the opponents and agree with them

Concerning the assertive strategies (pressive and evaluative), participants would not like being moved from their standpoints/ aspirations, since this constrains their autonomy. So the satisfaction rates should not be very high. While a neutral strategy without any judgement or pushiness could lead to more satisfaction. 

In the study, 100 mediations were observed by an observer within the room. His or her notes were analyzed by two raters independently, who interpreted the mediators strategies based on the notes. Another two raters independently coded the recorded mediations and assessed which techniques the mediators used.  
The independent variables were the mediators' strategies, the mediators techniques and the type of case. 
The dependent variables were whether the disputants had agreed to a settlement and the satisfaction rate via questionnaires. 

The results of the study showed, that when mediators used a neutral strategy, only 28% of the time an agreement was made. With the evaluative strategy, 69% of the time an agreement was found, while disputes mediated by pressive mediators, 57% were settled. Therefore, one could say, assertive strategies leasd to a higher agreement rate. 
Nevertheless, mediators using a neutral strategy lead to higher satisfaction rates. 

Even though the data supported the hypothesis, the effects were only moderate. On a 7-point scala, the evaluative strategy was only 0.22 points below the neutral, and the pressive was only 0.55 below the neutral strategy.
So, even though the difference was significant, the practical differences are quite modest.

One limitation was that the presence of the observer within the room could have affected the mediato's and disputants behavior (audience effect). They tried to minimize it by placing the observer in the far back of the room. 

Another limitation was the high variation in the agreement variables. This variation diminished the significance of important difference, but was expected due to the condition of a field study, where no controls are used. 

SVO is a preference in people to either regard one's self (pro-self) or others (pro social). It is considered as a trait, reflecting on how one evaluated outcomes for themselves or others. This preference seems to influence cooperation in interdependent situations.

The model is based on the goal/expectation theory which claims that a person has to be motivated to strive for the benefit of the collective rather than to be greedy. The individual's SVO influences their tendencies to cooperate and expectations of others, which in turn interact with contextual cues.These contextual cues are signals of trustworthiness and incentives to cooperate, which are also the moderators in this model. The mediators are the context-specific cooperative goal as well as the context-specific expectation of reciprocity. The outcome is the individual's cooperative behavior. 

Prosocial and pro-self 

The pro-self orientation consists of an individualist and a competitive orientation. Individualists try to maximize their own outcome and do whatever it takes to reach it, while a person with a competitive orientation strive for maximum gains relative to others. For them it's a win-lose situation. 

They strive to maximize the joint outcome and the equality in outcomes.

The larger the family and the older the siblings, the more pro social tendencies. The same goes for age, the older the person, the more likely it is that they have prosocial tendencies due to their stability in life and the lack of need to compete.