Turning Wolfs Into Lambs - Promoting Ethical Behaviour Through Ethical Guidelines In Negotiations

Economic scandals in business negotiations have shown how costly moral missteps are. However, unethical behaviour remains common especially in conflict-ridden negotiations. The assumption that unethical behaviour serves maximising one's profit is still widespread there. Meanwhile, numerous studies have invalidated this assumption by showing that disadvantages of unethical behaviour mostly outweigh its gain. Consequently, companies should provide stronger ethical guidance in negotiations. One promising measure to do so are ethical guidelines which offer constant ethical benchmarks. Up to now, however, there has been little research on the successful use of ethical negotiation guidelines. This study therefore aims to experimentally test if such guidelines can promote ethical negotiation behaviour. Answering this question, we conduct EFAs and CFAs as well as a content analysis to operationalize our independent variables and negotiation behaviour. Thus, the study fills the gap of the so far scarcely investigated possibilities for the practical promotion of ethical negotiation behaviour.