ATTRIBUTION THEORY AND UNETHICAL PRACTICES IN NEGOTIATION: HOW TO EXPLAIN WHAT IS UNBEARABLE?

Year 2013, Volume: 5 Issue: 2, 33 - 51, 01.12.2013

Claude Alavoine Claudine Batazzi

Abstract

As a purely human activity used in order to solve conflicts or in a more positive
way, to build projects, negotiation is a complex interaction involving participants
with different visions of what is or should be a proper one. While in practice
negotiation is always a mix of cooperation and competition, these two elements
correspond to different approaches of the relationship and also different
orientations in term of strategy, techniques, tactics and arguments employed by
the negotiators with related effects and in the end leading to different outcomes.
The levels of honesty, trust and therefore cooperation are influenced by many
factors like the uncertainty of the situation, the objectives, stakes and interests, the
level of power, the negotiator's personality and also by the orientation given from
the very beginning of the relationship. Negotiation poses ethical problems on the
simple fact that each party tries to get the other party to do something in its own
interest; The use of a specific tactic depends on each negotiator's perception of the
ethical appropriateness of it. Most of the negotiators have a tendency to complain
about the unethical aspects of the tactics used by their counterparts while, at the
same time, they are mostly unaware of the sources of influence of their own
vision of negotiation and practices. The legitimacy of the use of deception, lies or
even threats during the process has been widely discussed and remains the source
of many debates. These choices can sometimes be in opposition with the
negotiator's initial representation of what should be the interaction, based on his
own values, beliefs that are usually expressed in society. Are people always acting
in negotiation like they do in a non conflicting situation? Could the willingness to
succeed justify any means? What are the reasons or the causes of their behavior in
this specific situation?
In other words can unethical practices always be attributed to personal
characteristics (internal causes) or also be justified by the requirements of the
situation (external causes)? While reason explanations refer to intentional
behaviour, causes explanations refer to unintentional behaviour. But how could
negotiators be unintentionally unethical in their practices?
Drawing on concepts from several disciplines, our first intention in this paper is to
clarify the sources of influence leading negotiators to unethical practices in
opposition sometimes with their vision of the relationship. Then we will examine
some aspects of the attribution process enabling participants to make causal
explanations about unethical practices in order to uncover new hypotheses for
experimental research.

Keywords

Negotiation, ethics, attribution, bluff, threats, deception

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