COMMERCIAL NEGOTIATIONS seem to require a talent for deception. In simple, distributive bargaining, when someone asks, “What is your bottom line?” few negotiators tell the truth. They dodge, they change the subject, or they lie.1 In more complex, multi-issue negotiations, even relatively cooperative bargainers often inject straw issues or exaggerate the importance of minor problems in order to gain concessions on what really matters.2 In nearly all bargaining encounters, a key skill is the ability to communicate that you are relatively firm on positions when you are, in fact, flexible —in short, to bluff about your intentions.
The apparent necessity for misleading conduct in a process based on cooperation and co-ordination makes bargaining deception a prime target for ethical theorizing and empirical investigation. Given the high degree of academic interest, one would think that the investigation of deception would have included by now a detailed look at what one of our most powerful social institutions — the law — has to say on the subject. Curiously, academic students of negotiation have essentially ignored the law. Ethical discussions of deception either overlook it completely or assume that it proscribes only the most clear-cut types of fraud, leaving moralists to distinguish, and in some instances justify the finer points of deceptive conduct.3 Behavioral studies of bargaining deception, meanwhile,... To read the complete article, login or sign-up using the form below.
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