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Trust Building via Negotiation: Immediate versus Lingering Effects of General Trust and Negotiator Satisfaction

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Abstract

Building long-term trustful relationships with counterparts is a crucial objective for many negotiators. Despite numerous “snapshot” trust studies, little is known about the dynamics of trust change as the outcome in the negotiation context. In this study, we examined how negotiators’ general trust and different types of satisfaction affect their trust change toward counterparts immediately as well as lingeringly. We conducted a negotiation simulation with 260 participants, measuring their trust one week before, immediately after, and one week after the negotiation. We found that negotiators’ general trust and outcome satisfaction were positively associated with their trust change immediately after the negotiation. In addition, negotiators’ relationship satisfaction was positively associated with their trust change over the following week. The research findings achieve a comprehensive and dynamic understanding of trust building in negotiations.
Vol.:(0123456789)
Group Decision and Negotiation (2021) 30:507–528
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10726-020-09721-y
1 3
Trust Building viaNegotiation: Immediate versusLingering
Effects ofGeneral Trust andNegotiator Satisfaction
JingjingYao1 · MartinStorme1
Accepted: 24 December 2020 / Published online: 3 January 2021
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V. part of Springer Nature 2021
Abstract
Building long-term trustful relationships with counterparts is a crucial objective
for many negotiators. Despite numerous “snapshot” trust studies, little is known
about the dynamics of trust change as the outcome in the negotiation context. In this
study, we examined how negotiators’ general trust and different types of satisfac-
tion affect their trust change toward counterparts immediately as well as lingeringly.
We conducted a negotiation simulation with 260 participants, measuring their trust
one week before, immediately after, and one week after the negotiation. We found
that negotiators’ general trust and outcome satisfaction were positively associated
with their trust change immediately after the negotiation. In addition, negotiators’
relationship satisfaction was positively associated with their trust change over the
following week. The research findings achieve a comprehensive and dynamic under-
standing of trust building in negotiations.
Keywords Trust· Trust building· Negotiation· Negotiator satisfaction
1 Introduction
Negotiators often attempt to build trustful relationships with counterparts through
the negotiation, because trust can help them implement the agreement terms (Cam-
pagna etal. 2016), reduce transaction costs (Connelly etal. 2018), and strengthen
future cooperation (Krishnan etal. 2006). Famed investor Warren Buffett once said:
“we only want to link up with people who we like, admire, and trust” (Cunning-
ham and Buffett 2013, p. 408) because “we have never succeeded in making a good
deal with a bad person” (Cunningham and Buffett 2013, p. 348). Despite the well-
acknowledged importance of trust building in negotiations, the empirical studies on
* Jingjing Yao
j.yao@ieseg.fr
Martin Storme
m.storme@ieseg.fr
1 IESEG School ofManagement, 3 Rue de la Digue, 59800Lille, France
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
... Moreover, we test whether information reprocessability as a core feature of CMC can reduce the perceived risk in negotiations (e.g., Breuer et al., 2016;Gefen et al., 2008) and might even lead to advantages of online as compared to face-to-face settings. Finally, the current research contributes to the small but important literature on trust emergence and trust development in negotiations Lu et al., 2017;Yao & Storme, 2021), and provides insights on social-emotional negotiation outcomes, which are far less investigated than economic negotiation outcomes in computer-mediated negotiations (Geiger, 2020). ...
... Importantly, however, trust is often an important negotiation outcome itself. As many negotiations take place in long-term relationships, in business as well as in other contexts, previously built trust can facilitate future interactions serving as currency Lewicki & Stevenson, 1997;Yao & Storme, 2021). ...
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