The Impact of Conflict Issues on Fixed-Pie Perceptions, Problem Solving, and Integrative Outcomes in Negotiation

It is argued that a negotiator's fixed-pie perception, cooperative motivation, problem-solving behavior, and integrative outcomes are influenced by the content of the negotiation—the conflict issue. Negotiation involves conflicting interests, conflicting ideas about intellective problems, or conflicting ideas about evaluative problems. Study 1 showed that individuals in a negotiation about interests have a stronger fixed-pie perception and have a lower cooperative motivation than individuals in an evaluative negotiation, with intellective negotiations taking an intermediate position. Study 2 showed that individuals in a negotiation about interests made more trade-offs and reached higher joint outcomes than individuals in an intellective or evaluative negotiation. Study 3 replicated this finding in a field study. The studies bridge insights from negotiation research and decision-making research and show that the conflict issue has important effects on the negotiation process.     

PAIRED COMPARISON EVALUATIONS OF MANAGERIAL EFFECTIVENESS BY PEERS AND SUPERVISORS

Paired comparison evaluations were solicited for a relatively small group ( N = 20) of savings and loan association branch managers. Peer evaluations were obtained from 16 of these managers; supervisory evaluations were obtained from 4 officers. Inter-judge agreement (both within and between groups) was high. Further, this agreement extended beyond the derived paired comparison score to certain independently measured psychological characteristics of the persons evaluated. The peer-generated evaluations assisted the officers in making acceptable promotional decisions. In addition, discussion by the 4 officers of differences between their independently made evaluations made explicit a previously covert but potentially important difference in perspective about the determinants of managerial effectiveness. Ratings assigned by one officer reflected his implicitly heavy weight to human relations skill as a component of branch manager effectiveness; those assigned by the other 3 tended to give more weight to knowledge about financial matters related to the savings and loan industry.     

THE MINIATURE JOB TRAINING AND EVALUATION APPROACH: ADDITIONAL FINDINGS

Miniature job training and evaluation situations were developed and administered to 1034 "low aptitude" Navy recruits. Checklist criterion data describing the on-the-job performance of the sample were collected after the recruits were on their fleet assignments: (1) nine months, and (2) 18 months. The results confirmed prior findings relative to the predictive validity of the miniature job training and evaluation approach and supported contentions favoring the power of the concept over a paper-and-pencil testing approach.