NNN verslag 2008

1st Symposium of The Netherlands Negotiation

Network Clingendael December 15th 2008

Seminar on Negotiation Research and Training in the Netherlands

Organized by

Paul Meerts, Clingendael Institute

Per van der Wijst, Tilburg University

Gwendolyn Kolfschoten, Delft University of Technology


Netherlands Negotiation Network Clingendael, 15 December 2008 1

The structure of this document is equal to the program of the seminar.

Registration 9.00

Opening & Welcome by Paul Meerts 9.30

Introduction by Bernard Bot, Chair of Clingendael institute 9.45

First workshop scientific perspectives to negotiation

Chair: Gwendolyn Kolfschoten

Speaker: Ellen Giebels Speaker: Ilja van Beest Speaker: Per van der Wijst

10.00

Break 11.00

Discussion 11.30

Lunch

During lunch Ideas for the Netherlands Negotiation Network will be collected and several computer program demonstrations will be offered for those interested.

12.30

Second workshop scientific perspectives to negotiation

Chair: Per van der Wijst

Speakers: Machteld de Hoon Speaker: Michel Handgraaf Speaker: Gwendolyn Kolfschoten

13.30

Break 14.30

Discussion 15.00

Closure & reflection by Paul Meerts 16.00

Reception 16.30

The document concludes with Contact information.



Opening & Welcome by Paul Meerts

Inaugural Meeting of the Netherlands Negotiation Network

By Paul Meerts

On Monday December 15th. Clingendael Institute in The Hague welcomed the participants at the first and inaugural meeting of the Netherlands Negotiation Network (NNN). Unifying the Dutch branches of the Processes of International Negotiation (PIN) Programme of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) and Group Decision and negotiation (GDN), as well as the Clingendael International Negotiation Group (CLING).

This new network aims at establishing contacts and understanding between practitioners, researchers and trainers in The Netherlands and neighbouring countries. It will meet once a year (in 2009 at Clingendael Institute on Friday December 11), is setting‐up a Linkedin Network and envisages ad‐hoc common activities. The first one took place at the UNESCO Institute of the University of Delft on December 16, 2008.

For 2009 a Troika of Gwendolyn Kolfschoten (Technical University Delft / GDN), Pieter van der Wijst (University of Tilburg / GDN) and Paul Meerts (Clingendael Insitute / PIN) will act as a Coordinating Committee. The Netherlands Negotiation Network will consist of all participants and presenters of the December 2008 meeting and all others who express the wish to be a network member.

The first network conference had Bernard Bot as its keynote speaker. As a Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of The Netherlands – as well as its Permanent Representative to the European Union, Deputy Permanent Representative to NATO, Ambassador to Turkey and Secretary General of the Ministry – he has been involved in diplomatic negotiations ever since. His speech gave rise to a very interesting and intensive discussion.

After an opening statement on the purpose and the future of the network, the morning session continued with a panel chaired by Gwendolyn Kolfschoten, followed by an afternoon panel presided by Per van der Wijst. Panel members presented findings of negotiation research in The Netherlands, followed by Questions and Answers with thirty high level participants, all being practitioner, researcher or trainer themselves.

Paul Meerts is Advisor to the Director of the Clingendael Institute and Professor in International Negotiation Analysis at the College of Europe in Bruges (Belgium) and the University of Economics in Prague (Czech Republic). He is a Member of the Steering Committee of the Processes of International Negotiations (PIN) Programme at the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Laxenburg (Austria) and of the Advisory Board of the Journal of International Negotiation (Washington). As co‐founder of Clingendael he has been Director of the Department of Training and Education (1983‐1989) and Deputy Director of the Institute (1990‐2006).



First workshop scientific perspectives to negotiation

Chair: Gwendolyn Kolfschoten

Gwendolyn L. Kolfschoten is an assistant Professor at Delft University of Technology, Faculty of Technology Policy and Management, department of Systems Engineering in the Netherlands. She is an experienced facilitator of thinkLets‐based Group Support Systems workshop having worked with numerous public and private organizations. Her research focuses on the quality of thinkLet‐based collaboration process design for complex tasks. Her research has been presented at HICSS and CRIWG, AMCIS and GDN conferences and has been published in the International Journal of Computer Application in Technology, International Journal of Human‐Computer Studies and Group Decision and Negotiation.

Speaker: Ellen Giebels

Ellen Giebels (Ph.D., University of Groningen, 1999) is associate professor in the Department of Psychology & Communication of Health & Risk of the University of Twente, the Netherlands. Her research focuses on conflict, negotiation, and mediation, particularly in crisis environments. Ellen is (co‐) author of numerous peer‐reviewed articles and several books, including “Crisis Negotiations: A multi‐party perspective” (with Sigrid Noelanders) and “Conflict Management” (with Martin C. Euwema). Three of her papers received a best paper award, including her work on cultural differences in crisis negotiations (with Paul J. Taylor), which won the 2007 Best Applied Paper award of the International Association for Conflict Management conference. Next to her academic work, Ellen is active as an advisor and trainer for several governmental agencies (law enforcement, defense) throughout Europe.

Negotiation in crisis environments

My research associates and I focus on understanding the ways in which conflict parties’ communication and influence strategies shape the progress of interaction, and how this differs across types of incidents and relationships, time periods, and cultures. We address issues such as effective strategy use and the prediction of outcome, and include factors like power (a)symmetry, resource depletion and conflict stress. In order to understand the complex dynamics of conflict negotiations, we use a range of research methods, varying from experimental studies in laboratory settings to analysis of authentic conflict negotiations, such as in hostage incidents, interrogation situations, and police‐civilian interactions in problematic neighborhoods. Employing a multi‐party perspective, we acknowledge that negotiation parties may have asymmetrical conflict perceptions, and consider the psychological effects for (potential) victims of escalated conflicts and the implication for negotiation strategies.















Speaker: Ilja van Beest

My main research interests are coalition formation, social exclusion, negotiation, and symptom attribution. The general theme of my research on coalition formation is that coalition behavior can only be truly understood when researchers take into account that self‐interest is only part of the story. The other part is that fairness considerations determine whether a coalition is actually formed. This line of research is sumarized in an overview article that introduces a social utility model of coalition formation (Van Beest & Van Dijk, 2007). A provocative finding in this line of research is that players rather form a fair coalition that does not maximize their individual payoff than an unfair coalition that maximizes their individual payoffs.

Another major research line is social exclusion. Different than coalition formation this area does not focus on the choice of exclusion but on the consequences of exclusion. In my first attempt to investigate social exclusion I focused on the agents of exclusion. The main finding was that ignoring others leads to guilt and impaired cognitive abilities. This is an interesting finding because it suggests that exclusion may actually hurt the one who excludes. Subsequent studies focused more on the victims of exclusion. In a line of experiments I show that people are hurt when ostracized even when it is financial beneficial. In fact, just as much as when it is financially harmful (Van Beest & Williams, 2006).

Apart from coalition formation and social exclusion, I have always had an interest in how people that suffer from a severe disease attribute physical symptoms. A dominant theme in this research is that people are likely to attribute negative physical states to their illness even if this is objectively not the case. For example, children with asthma that are put under stress may misattribute their stress to having an asthma attack (Rietveld & Van Beest, 2006).

Discussing social and financial payoffs in negotiation

We often face problems that we cannot solve alone. On such moments we need the help of others. The process of selecting the most appropriate person is addressed by social psychological research on coalition formation. In government formation, for example, political parties are likely to select a coalition partner that will maximize their own political agenda. However, an underappreciated consequence of coalition formation is that the decision to select a specific coalition partner by default also implies that other potential coalition partners are not selected. This may sound obvious, and indeed, exactly what coalition formation is all about. But, as I will show in the current talk, it leads to some counterintuitive findings when people face problems in which they either negotiate about gains or losses. Using, a slightly adapted :‐), game of Russian roulette in which players either allocated gains or losses, I will demonstrate that the decision to include is sensitive to payoff valence, whereas the consequences of being excluded is not. This demonstrates that individuals are perhaps more sensitive to social payoffs than to financial payoffs. Or, as in the Olympic spirit, it often not about winning or losing but indeed just about participating.



















Speaker: Per van der Wijst

Per van der Wijst (1960) is assistant professor in the Department of Communication and Information Sciences of Tilburg University. He currently teaches negotiation strategies, communication and decision processes, and designing functional communication. His recent research interests are in interpersonal negotiation processes, conflict management and the related communication processes. After receiving his Ph. D at Tilburg University (1996), he has worked 8 years in Belgium as a lecturer at the University of Liege, where he was responsible for the Dutch language acquisition program within the BA and MA program of Germanic languages. From 2004, his main work activities have been in Tilburg, where he has taught discourse analysis and organizational communication before switching to the current program. He is still living with his family in Wallonia, the French speaking part of Belgium, which keeps his interest for intercultural communication and bilingualism alive.

His research activities have been varied. His Ph.D‐thesis was on politeness strategies and negotiations, in French and Dutch. He has published on the language of negotiators and on cultural differences in politeness matters. His interest in discourse and communication led furthermore to joint work on persuasive communication, chat communication and the role of media in language acquisition. His present research focuses on decision processes and conflict management. Papers on the role of in‐ or out‐group factors on the decision process in conflict management have been submitted for publication. Ongoing research focuses on deception in negotiations.

Good Relations and Negotiations. Facilitation or stress?

One of the most popular activities on the internet is to share information and experiences on community websites, like Facebook and Hyves, or to share it with the entire world through personal weblogs or personal websites. New friendships are easily made, old friends are found back, relationship management seems to flourish. Business relations can profit from these sources of information and this enables them to personalize their relations more easily than a decade ago.

The increased opportunities for rapport management are most likely welcomed by most business men, since negotiators who have a good relationship have serious advantages. Several studies have shown that friendship has indeed a positive effect on problem solving and integrative bargaining tasks. However, in distributive settings, friendship can also hamper the negotiation process and lead to worse outcomes. Parties in a close relationship often do not push hard enough, out of fear for conflicts. They also may sacrifice their own preferences in order to safeguard the relationship. A friendship relation can also lead to the assumption of relational “safety”, giving space to less ethical strategies such as misrepresenting information or bluffing. A recent study of friend negotiators for example, indicated that they deceived each other more often than negotiators who did not know each other. They reported that “their friendship and mutual trust was solid enough to handle this”. Nevertheless, the same study indicated that their friendship did suffer from the negotiation.

It is clear that a close relation in a negotiation context can be an asset as well as a pitfall. The studies carried out in this field still raise many questions, which can benefit from a thorough discussion.











Second workshop scientific perspectives to negotiation Chair: Per van der Wijst

Per van der Wijst (1960) is assistant professor in the Department of Communication and Information Sciences of Tilburg University. He currently teaches negotiation strategies, communication and decision processes, and designing functional communication. His recent research interests are in interpersonal negotiation processes, conflict management and the related communication processes. After receiving his Ph. D at Tilburg University (1996), he has worked 8 years in Belgium as a lecturer at the University of Liege, where he was responsible for the Dutch language acquisition program within the BA and MA program of Germanic languages. From 2004, his main work activities have been in Tilburg, where he has taught discourse analysis and organizational communication before switching to the current program. He is still living with his family in Wallonia, the French speaking part of Belgium, which keeps his interest for intercultural communication and bilingualism alive.

His research activities have been varied. His Ph.D‐thesis was on politeness strategies and negotiations, in French and Dutch. He has published on the language of negotiators and on cultural differences in politeness matters. His interest in discourse and communication led furthermore to joint work on persuasive communication, chat communication and the role of media in language acquisition. His present research focuses on decision processes and conflict management. Papers on the role of in‐ or out‐group factors on the decision process in conflict management have been submitted for publication. Ongoing research focuses on deception in negotiations.

Speakers: Machteld de Hoon

Machteld de Hoon is Associate Professor in Civil Law, at Tilburg University. Her research focus is contract law (in particular long‐term contracts), negotiations, conflict management and conflict resolution systems. In 2005, she finished her PhD on managing conflicts when long‐term contracts are ended unilaterally. More recently, she published on the role of blame in contract law, using input from other social sciences. Furthermore, she is involved in research pilots hosted at the district court of Zutphen and The Hague, experimenting with ‘tailor made’ legal proceedings. Additionally, she will be appointed as a Judge at the District Court of ‘s‐Hertogenbosch in December 2008. She takes part in TISCO (Tilburg Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies of Civil Law and Conflict Resolution Systems), a research group focusing on 'justice needs' of individuals in case of legal problems.

“Communication/negotiation support from a legal perspective: TISCO research”

Research shows that 5 % of disputes between Dutch civilians ends up in court, and 45 % ends in a mutual agreement. Yet, lawyers tend to focus primarily on duties, rights and proceedings in court, instead of how to solve the conflict. The Dutch Ministry of Justice expressed the policy to strengthen the self‐solving capacitates of civilians. Offering communication and negotiation support is one way to make that happen. Many research projects of TISCO (Tilburg Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies of Civil Law and Conflict Resolution Systems) focus on offering support in some way. For example, TISCO researchers developed a code of conduct for personal injury claims. Others work on a code of conduct for divorce. One of the central questions we address is how to improve the access to justice, for those in need for legal help. Some of us are involved in pilots experimenting with new proceedings in court. One of the pilots (at the District Court of Zutphen) experiments with early oral sessions, hosted by both a judge and a mediator. Others focus on tools to develop objective criteria, and make them easily accessible for a broad public. The role of substantive law (e.g. contract law) in conflict management has our attention as well. Some rules seem to trigger blame unnecessarily.



These (and many other unmentioned) projects are laid down in the TISCO research program 2009‐2013: Justice needs of individuals in case of legal problems.













Speaker: Michel Handgraaf

Dr. Handgraaf wrote his dissertation on Self‐interest and Other‐oriented Motives in Social Decision Making at Leiden University. After working as a Postdoc and Assistant Professor at the department of Economic and Social Psychology, he is currently employed as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Work and Organizational Psychology at the University of Amsterdam and as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions (CRED) at Columbia University, New York. He does research on the role of power and powerlessness in interdependent situations and bargaining, and on the reasons for the aversion people frequently feel with regard to negotiation. This line of research focuses on the friction that may occur when moral ideals (such as speaking the truth and being fair and generous) are in conflict with the pursuit of self‐interest, something that frequently occurs when people negotiate. Recently, he has developed an interest in the lack of decision making: decision avoidance, procrastination, buck passing etc. At CRED he works on research that focuses on environmental decision making by groups vs. individuals and the effects of preparation and framing on subsequent decision outcomes.

The Effects of Power, Moral Sentiments and Role‐focus on Negotiation.

In my talk I will talk about three related projects, each about negotiation.

The first project focuses on the role of power and powerlessness in interdependent situations and bargaining. In a recent paper, we use Ultimatum‐ and Dictator Games to investigate whether the idea that power corrupts is true. We show that people indeed behave less generously the more power they have, but interestingly enough become more generous when they are absolutely powerful. This is contrary to lay beliefs about the effects of power and leads to interesting and sometimes counterproductive patterns of behavior by the less powerful.

The second project deals with the fact that people frequently avoid negotiations, even when negotiating promises to bring all parties involved higher outcomes than not negotiating. We argue and show that one of the reasons people avoid negotiation is the friction people expect to occur when moral ideals (such as speaking the truth and being fair) are in conflict with the pursuit of self‐interest, something that frequently occurs when people negotiate.

The third and final project deals with the differences between parties in asymmetric negotiation situations. In this project we show that different roles (such as buyer vs. seller) may induce different motivations that will lead negotiators to enter a situation with different aims, which in turn may lead to different behavior on relevant variables such as initial offers and persistence in a negotiation.



Speaker: Gwendolyn Kolfschoten

Gwendolyn L. Kolfschoten is an assistant Professor at Delft University of Technology, Faculty of Technology Policy and Management, department of Systems Engineering in the Netherlands. She is an experienced facilitator of thinkLets‐based Group Support Systems workshop having worked with numerous public and private organizations. Her research focuses on the quality of thinkLet‐based collaboration process design for complex tasks. Her research has been presented at HICSS and CRIWG, AMCIS and GDN conferences and has been published in the International Journal of Computer Application in Technology, International Journal of Human‐Computer Studies and Group Decision and Negotiation.

Consensus Building from a Collaboration Engineering perspective

Research authored by

Dr. Robert O. Briggs

Dr. Ir. Gwendolyn L. Kolfschoten

Prof. Dr. Gert‐Jan de Vreede

In many groups, decisions cannot be made by fiat because no single person has sufficient expertise, resources, or power to mandate the cooperation of others. When success‐critical stakeholders are not in hierarchical relationships, then one may not be able to require others to go along with a proposal. Even when hierarchical relationships exist, it is often in the interests of a superior to obtain the consent of subordinates whose contributions are critical to the success of an effort. In such multi actor situations, groups must reach consensus in order to proceed and succeed.

When looking at consensus in a broader perspective of negotiation, commitment, choice and decision making, many methods and approaches are available, but the choice between techniques and approaches is challenging. A lack of consensus or disagreement often surfaces in a conflict or at least challenging situation with many stakeholders. In this presentation we will present a diagnostic tool to show different sources of disagreement and different objects of disagreements when groups seek consensus. Based on this diagnostic a more deliberate choice for consensus building methods can be chosen.













Contact information

Paul Meerts Advisor to the Director of the Clingendael Institute [email protected] dr. Per van der Wijst Universitair docent Faculteit Geesteswetenschappen Dpt. Comm.‐Inform.wetensch [email protected] Dr. Ir. Gwendolyn Kolfschoten Assistant Professor Collaboration Engineering Department of Systems Engineering Faculty of Technology Policy and Management Delft University of Technology e‐mail: [email protected] www: http://www.tbm.tudelft.nl Dr. Ellen Giebels Associate professor Department of Psychology & Communication of Health & Risk Faculty of Behavioural Sciences University of Twente [email protected] Michel J.J. Handgraaf University of Amsterdam Dept. of Psychology [email protected] http://home.medewerker.uva.nl/m.j.j.handgraaf/ Dr. Machteld W. de Hoon Associate Professor Civil Law, Tilburg University (TISCO) [email protected] Dr. Ilja van Beest Psychologie, FSW, Universiteit Leiden [email protected] Home Page

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