Analyzing Negotiation Tactics: Development of a Negotiation Interact System

This research has three main objectives: to formulate a set of negotiation tactics based on a qualitative examination of bargaining interaction and prior research, to develop an interact system to code negotiation interaction based on these tactics, and to test the extent to which relative tactical use could be used to determine winners and losers in the negotiation. Three types of tactics were developed: attacking, defending, and regressing. The tactics were further divided into those that cued or constrained the next utterance, and those that responded to the prior utterance. Thus, each utterance was coded twice—as a response and as a cue. The structure of relative tactical use significantly predicted the outcome of experimental negotiations. In addition, it was demonstrated that when the structure of relative tactical use was displayed visually, the researcher could gain a clear picture of the exchange process in the negotiation.