Episode 3: Negotiation Contexts: How and Why They Shape Women’s and Men’s Decision to Negotiate

Episode 3 article abstract: In the substantial body of research on gender differences in the initiation of negotiation, the findings consistently favor men (Kugler et al., 2018). We propose that this research itself is gendered because negotiation research has traditionally focused on masculine negotiation contexts. In the current study, we replicate the gender effect in initiating negotiations (favoring men) and provide an empirically based selection of “masculine,” “feminine,” and “neutral” negotiation contexts, which can be used for future negotiation research. We show that the negotiation context shapes gender differences such that in specific social contexts, women tend to have even higher initiation intentions compared to men. Negotiation contexts generally seem to differ regarding their affordance to negotiate. We offer a possible explanation for gender effects on initiation intentions by uncovering the mediating role of expectancy considerations across all negotiation contexts, especially in masculine contexts, and instrumentality considerations in specific masculine and feminine contexts.Author bios:Julia A. M. Reif is postdoctoral scientific staff member and lecturer of Economic and Organizational Psychology at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet Muenchen, Munich. She has been teaching and conducting research at the Chair of Economic and Organizational Psychology since 2008. In her doctoral thesis, she investigated the questions of when and why people begin to negotiate. Her research interests further include team processes, stress management, and organizational acculturation. She is an active speaker at conferences and conventions and publishes her work, sponsored among others by the European Union, in internationally acknowledged journals. She received the 2020 NCMR Best Article Award together with her colleagues Felix Brodbeck, Katharina Kugler and Fiona Kunz. Since 2007, she has been working as a practitioner with national and international organizations in the areas of organizational diagnosis and organizational development.Felix C. Brodbeck is Chair of Organizational and Economic Psychology at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet Muenchen. He has published ten books and more than 100 scholarly articles in the fields of cross-cultural psychology, leadership, group and organizational effectiveness, organizational culture, decision making, negotiation, innovation, economic psychology, and applied research methods. He has also published numerous articles in practitioners’ journals and books. In 2014, he became fellow of the International Association of Applied Psychology (IAAP). For more than 30 years, he has been working as a consultant with national and international companies in the areas of organizational, team and leadership diagnosis and development. This rounds up his track record as a curious traveller in two, often complementary, worlds, the academic world, as an applied organizational psychologist developing and testing theories empirically, and the practical world, as a consultant and evidence-based management adviser adapting and applying scientific theories and methods in real world settings for the good of working people and their companies.Article Citation:Reif, J. A. M., Kunz, F. A., Kugler, K. G., Brodbeck, F. C. (2019).  Negotiation Contexts: How and Why They Shape Women's and Men's Decision to Negotiate. Negotiation and Conflict Management Research, 12(4), 322-342. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/ncmr.12153