商務(wù)談判英語(yǔ):The Role of Trust in Negotiation

Individual Antecedents of Trust in Negotiation

1. People generally start with high levels of trust even without data about the situation or the other party.

2. Individual motives shape expectations of trust.

3. Personality differences shape expectations. Some individuals have a greater disposition to trust; others have a strong disposition to distrust.

4. Emotions contribute to trust or distrust. Anger contributes to distrust and more competitive behavior; hope and positive emotions contribute to trust and more cooperative behavior.

Situational Antecedents of Trust in Negotiation

1. The nature of the negotiation process shapes trust expectations. Parties who expect more distributive negotiations are less trusting than parties who expect integrative negotiations.

2. Face-to-face negotiations encourage greater trust development than online negotiation.

3. Negotiators who are representing others interests (in an agency capacity) tend to be less trusting and less trustworthy than if they were representing their own interests.

Trust and Negotiation Processes

1. The emphasis on focusing on different things is amplified by the type of negotiations the parties expect:

2. If they expect a distributive negotiation, the “trustor” tends to focus on the risks they face by disclosing information, while the “trustees” focus on the benefits they might gain from what they learn from the other.

3. If they expect an integrative negotiation, the “trustor” tends to focus more on what kind of information they can provide to the other, while the “trustee” focuses on what kind of information they need from the other to meet common interests.

4. Trust tends to increase the number of “positive” turning points around common interests, and decreases the number of “negative” turning points that might deadlock a negotiation around polarization of issues or negative emotions.

Outcomes of Trust

1. Trust cues cooperative behavior.

2. Trust enhances the sharing of information in a negotiation, and greater information sharing

generally leads to better negotiation outcomes.

3. Parties who trust each other tend to communicate more by using questions and answers in order to share information and understand the other’s perspective.

4. Parties who trust each other less tend to argue for and justify their own preferences and listen less to the other, hence are less likely to understand the other’s perspective and more likely to “force” their view on the other party.