Turner Business Faculty Trailblazers

 Building a Better Bargaining Framework

As Turner College assistant professor of management Hyeran Choi points out in her joint-authored research with Daisung Jang of the University of Queensland (Australia) and Jeffrey Lowenstein of the University of Illinois, effective negotiation rests in part on generating integrative agreements, or agreements advancing parties’ interests through generating joint gains.  Their study of negotiations, which appears in a 2021 issue of Group Decision and Negotiation, also indicates that prior negotiation research relies disproportionately on studies of one method of integration – making efficient tradeoffs on existing issues.  Choi and her colleagues address this single-minded focus on negotiations by examining integration through redefinition, which is a process that entails modifying the issues under discussion.  According to Choi, “[redefinition] encourages revisiting the role goals play in negotiation,” a result that can be beneficial to the parties involved.  The 2021 study found that positive and negative bargaining zones are good cues to consider redefining issues, where negative bargaining zones spur attempts to create value that positive bargaining zones do not. Choi and her colleagues also found that focusing on interests, as opposed to ambitious targets, is useful for redefining issues.