The role of political skill in negotiation: How social competence relates to cooperativeness, reputation and outcomes

This research presents a unique perspective on the role of individual differences in negotiation. We explore whether a social competence measure known as political skill is related to negotiator behaviors, reputation, and outcomes. We posit that political skill will emerge as an influential predictor of these outcomes over time, because the relationships may not be detectable in short, time-limited interactions. Over the course of 12-week MBA negotiation courses we find that political skill, self-rated at the beginning of a course, is significantly related to a negotiator’s overall use of cooperative behavior, their reputation for cooperativeness, and aggregate outcomes obtained over a series of five unique negotiations. Importantly, these results control for other individual difference measures such as personality, implicit negotiation beliefs, social value orientation and negotiation self-efficacy. We will discuss how political skill fits in the re-emerging literature focusing on individual differences in negotiation.