The effects of online mediator's strategies under trust and distrust conditions Online publication date: Wed, 24-Jan-2007
by William H. Ross, Jengchung V. Chen
International Journal of Management and Decision Making (IJMDM), Vol. 8, No. 1, 2007
Abstract: This paper describes a laboratory experiment that investigated whether or not three online mediation strategies – rapport building, pressing, and inaction – were effective in promoting agreement when the opponent was trustful vs. distrustful. Students served as negotiators. A 2×4 factorial design varied the level of trust (high vs. low) that a pre-programmed opponent communicated while offering moderately competitive bargaining proposals. Pre-programmed mediator strategy was also varied (pressing, inaction, reflexive rapport-building, and a control condition of no messages). Dependent variables included: the value of the subject's offers; the evaluations of the mediation procedure and mediator behaviour (according to procedural justice concepts), using a post-mediation questionnaire. While neither trust nor mediator strategy significantly affected the concessions that the subjects offered, the results revealed that mediator strategy significantly influenced subjects' evaluations of the procedure and of the mediator.
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