Respect Fosters Forming Creative Agreements

Keywords: respect, listening, creative agreements, negotiation

Abstract: Respecting one’s counterpart in a negotiation might be the right thing to do both strategically and ethically. To respect one’s counterpart in a negotiation means to believe that their interests are worthy of consideration and that they should not be treated as a means to one’s own end. Thus, respect is directly theoretically linked to understanding and addressing all parties’ interests, arguably the central concern of any negotiation. The studies in this paper provide an empirical link. Specifically, they offer evidence that in ambiguous negotiation situations, respect fosters listening to and making use of a counterpart’s information to form creative agreements.