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This research proposes and evaluates hypotheses about patterns of communication in a multi‐party, multi‐issue negotiation. Data were from 36 four‐person groups. We found that the majority of groups initiated negotiations with a distributive phase and ended with an integrative phase—strong support for Morley and Stephenson's (1979) rational model of negotiation. We identified transitions between both strategic orientations (integration, distribution) and strategic functions (action, information), but found that the first transition was more likely to result in a change of orientation than of function and that negotiators were more likely to change either orientation or function (single transition) than to change both aspects of the negotiation simultaneously (double transition). Finally, we determined that negotiators used process and closure strategies to interrupt distributive phases and redirect negotiations to an integrative phase.

This paper aims to add to the current knowledge about conflict management by examining the relationships between conflict type, conflict expression intensity and the use of the conflict management approach.

The authors test theory-based hypotheses using a field study of new product development teams in an interdisciplinary Masters program (Study 1) and an experimental vignette study (Study 2).

Results show that people are more likely to respond to task conflict and conflicts expressed with less intensity using collectivistic conflict management approaches (i.e. problem-solving, compromising and yielding), and to relationship conflicts and conflicts expressed with higher intensity through forcing, an individualistic conflict management approach. Information acquisition and negative emotions experienced by team members mediate these relationships.

Knowing how the characteristics of the conflict (type and expression intensity) affect conflict management, managers can counteract the tendency to use dysfunctional, forcing conflict management approaches in response to high intensity conflicts, as well as to relationship conflicts and support the tendency to use collectivistic conflict management approaches in response to low intensity conflict, as well as task conflicts.

The authors examine an alternative to the prevailing view that conflict management serves as a moderator of the relationship between conflict and team outcomes. The research shows that conflict type and intensity of conflict expression influence the conflict management approach as a result of the information and emotion they evoke. The authors open avenues for future research on the complex and intriguing relationships between conflict characteristics and the conflict management approach.

This paper examined negotiator behavior in a variable‐sum two‐party negotiation task and its impact on individual and joint negotiator out‐come. Specifically, we examined the role of negotiator opening offer, reciprocity and complementarity of the use of tactics, systematic progression of offers, and information sharing in a negotiation with integrative potential. Results indicated that initial offers affect final outcome differently across buyers and sellers. The buyer's initial offer was curvilinearly related to his or her final outcome in the form of an inverted‐U. The seller's initial offer was positive‐linearly related to seller's outcome. Second, negotiators reciprocated and complemented both distributive and integrative tactics. In addition, highly integrative dyads differed from less efficient dyads in their reciprocation of integrative behaviors and complementarity of distributive behaviors. Third, approximately forty percent of offers made represented systematic concessions, but the proportion of offers reflecting systematic concessions was not related to the efficiency of the joint outcome. Finally, while information sharing did appear to have a positive effect on the efficiency of agreements, differences in the amount of information provided did not affect the proportion of outcome claimed by each party.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of enriched group work design and objective and perceived expertise diversity in interdisciplinary research groups with a focus on two critical group processes: task conflict and idea sharing.

Survey data were collected from 148 researchers and their advisors in 29 research labs at two doctorate-granting universities. The study tested the hypothesized model using hierarchical ordinary least squares regression and hierarchical linear modeling.

Results showed that objective and perceived (salient) expertise diversity jointly influenced task conflict. In addition, whether task conflict had a positive or negative impact on idea sharing depended on group work design enrichment and expertise diversity salience. Idea sharing improved group outcomes over and above the effects of task conflict.

Although this study could not test the causal relationships owing to a cross-sectional nature of data, it provides theoretical implications for the group work design, diversity and conflict literature.

Group work design represents an important tool for stimulating idea sharing in research groups. The findings suggest that managers should consider and manage the level of expertise diversity salience and the level of task conflict to increase the effectiveness of group work design.

The study provides insights on when task conflict may help creative groups. Work design and diversity salience represent important contextual features. The paper also examines both the objective and perceived diversity and disentangles task conflict and idea sharing.

Purpose – This chapter examines how we study group dynamics in the organizational behavior literature, in terms of the past, present, and future potential. The goal is to aid researchers in considering studying group processes in their own work.

Methodology/approach – Examples are given of different approaches used to elucidate how group dynamics can be studied in terms of frequencies, phases, and sequences across a variety of group process domains.

Findings – Results of the review suggest that while there has been more interest in studying group dynamics and examples can be found in the literature, there is still much opportunity for additional research. Advancements in theory and methods provide the means for doing so.

Originality/value – Suggestions are provided for groups researchers on how to put their existing recordings of group processes to work.

Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to introduce new methods to behavioral research on group negotiation.

Design/methodology/approach – We describe three techniques from the field of Machine Learning and discuss their possible application to modeling dynamic processes in group negotiation: Markov Models, Hidden Markov Models, and Inverse Reinforcement Learning. Although negotiation research has employed Markov modeling in the past, the latter two methods are even more novel and cutting-edge. They provide the opportunity for researchers to build more comprehensive models and to use data more efficiently. To demonstrate their potential, we use scenarios from group negotiation research and discuss their hypothetical application to these methods. We conclude by suggestions for researchers interested in pursuing this line of work.

Originality/value – This chapter introduces methods that have been successfully used in other fields and discusses how these methods can be used in behavioral negotiation research. This chapter can be a valuable guide to researchers that would like to pursue computational modeling of group negotiation.

This study examined the influence of mediator insight on disputants' perceptions and behaviors in negotiation. Participants played the role of student employee representatives and bargained with student management representatives over a number of issues. During the course of the negotiation, a mediator made recommendations as to how the conflict should be resolved. The experiment varied (1) the amount of information disputants believed mediators possessed about their interests and needs and (2) mediator recommendations (e.g., integrative, compromise, non/ integrative). The results indicated that perceived insight (i.e., the level of information about the conflict) had strong effects on disputants' perceptions of mediator credibility. Perceptions of mediator credibility, in turn, were found to influence disputants' general perceptions of the mediator (e.g., acceptability, confidence, satisfaction) and perceptions of the mediator's recommendations.

Understanding how dyadic negotiations and group decision processes evolve over time requires specifying the basic elements of process, modeling the configuration of those elements over time, and providing a theoretical explanation for that configuration. We propose a bead metaphor for conceptualizing the basic elements of the group negotiation process and then “string” the beads of behavior in a helix framework to model the process by which group negotiations evolve. Our theorizing draws on the group decision development literature (e.g. Bales, 1953; Poole, 1981, 1983a, b; Poole & Roth, 1989a, b) as well as on the negotiation process literature (e.g. Gulliver, 1979; Morley & Stephenson, 1977). Our examples are from our Towers Market studies of negotiating groups.