Title: The effects of online mediator's strategies under trust and distrust conditions

Authors: William H. Ross, Jengchung V. Chen

Addresses: Department of Management, University of Wisconsin, 1705 State Street, La Crosse WI 54650, USA. ' Institute of Telecommunications Management, National Cheng Kung University, 1 University Road, Tainan 701, Taiwan

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.

Keywords: mediation strategies; procedural justice; concession making; trust; distrust; microcomputer negotiation; online mediators; decision making.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMDM.2007.012149

International Journal of Management and Decision Making, 2007 Vol.8 No.1, pp.30 - 51

Published online: 24 Jan 2007 *

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