When constituencies speak in multiple tongues: The relative persuasiveness of hawkish minorities in representative negotiation

Wolfgang Steinel, Carsten K.W. De Dreu, Elsje Ouwehand and Ramírez-Marín, Jimena Y.

Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 2009, vol. 109, issue 1, pages 67-78

Abstract: Although constituencies often consist of opposing factions, we know little about the way such opposing factions influence the representative's negotiation strategy. This study addressed this issue: Representatives negotiated as sellers on behalf of a group consisting of hawkish (competitive) and dovish (cooperative) factions. Experiments 1-3 showed that a minority of hawks was sufficient to influence the representatives to acting in a competitive way; only when all constituents unanimously advocated a cooperative strategy were representatives more conciliatory towards their negotiation partner. These tendencies did not differ as a function of the representatives' pro-social versus pro-self value orientation, or the unanimity versus majority rule putatively used in the constituency to accept of reject the representative's negotiated agreement. We conclude that hawkish minorities are persuasive and influential because representatives accord more weight to hawkish than to dovish messages.

Keywords: Representative; negotiation; Homogeneous; or; heterogeneous; consistency; Intergroup; negotiation; Intragroup; conflict; Social; influence; Decision; rules; Social; value; orientation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6WP2 ... 9e88ee3011c097fec0ab
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jobhdp:v:109:y:2009:i:1:p:67-78

Access Statistics for this article

Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes is edited by John M. Schaubroeck

More articles in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes from Elsevier
Series data maintained by Heidi Boesdal ().