Persuasion in Representative Negotiation— How Representatives Communicate Negotiated Agreements to Their Constituency

Abstract: Organizational negotiations do not end once an agreement is reached. When negotiations are carried out by representatives on behalf of their constituency’s interests, constituency ratification is crucial for the success of the agreement. Yet, research is silent as to how representatives communicate negotiation results to their constituents and persuade their constituency to ratify negotiated agreements. In an online experiment, demographically diverse representatives with self-reported negotiation experience (N = 424) were provided with a standardized negotiation result and tasked with writing a ratification speech to their constituency. Using reflexive thematic analysis, we identified 18 subthemes and five overarching themes of how representatives communicate and persuade their constituency of their negotiation results: (1) addressing causes and reasons, (2) sharing impressions on process and counterpart, (3) shifting constituents’ perspectives, (4) building relationships with the constituency, and (5) applying pressure to the constituency. Using network analysis, we revealed the interrelations between subthemes and visualized communication patterns. We discuss how our empirically generated subthemes align with established principles from the literature on persuasion theory and propose one additional principle that applies to representative negotiation. Our results offer important theoretical as well as practical insights and pave the way for future research on agreement ratification.

Keywords: negotiation, representatives, constituency, communication, persuasion