Advanced Negotiation training in LucerneNegotiation: should managers demand accountability for the outcome or the process?
After a negotiation, managers often ask what concession was secured. Another question deserves to be raised before the meeting: how will the decisions made have to be justified?
1. What the literature establishes
Carsten K. W. De Dreu, Sander L. Koole and Wolfgang Steinel (2000, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology) studied motivated information processing in negotiation. In their experiments, accountability for the decision-making process encourages closer examination of information and can improve integrative agreements, which accommodate the parties' differing priorities. The managerial issue is therefore not just setting an objective, but specifying what the negotiator will need to explain.
2. The mechanism: scrutiny or conformity
Jennifer S. Lerner and Philip E. Tetlock (1999, Psychological Bulletin) show in their literature review that the effects of accountability depend, among other things, on when it is announced and on the evaluator's expectations. When the evaluator's position is known, accountability can encourage conformity rather than an open examination of options. Announced before the decision, without prescribing a preferred answer, the requirement to justify choices can instead encourage more careful reflection.
3. The premature conclusion
It would be tempting to conclude that more approvals and reports are needed. Yet justifying a process is not the same as requesting permission for every concession: increased oversight may simply redirect attention towards pleasing a superior. Managers would do better to ask which information led to a decision, without prescribing the only acceptable answer in advance. (our executive and employee training programmes)
4. The limits of the evidence and of evaluation
Negotiation experiments use structured situations that differ from some commercial negotiations, where information remains incomplete and relationships continue over time. The accountability review covers a range of decisions and does not provide specific proof for every professional negotiation. Finally, a persuasive retrospective account does not establish sound reasoning: it needs to be checked against records made during preparation and discussions.
5. A practical check in Lucerne
In Lucerne, tourism, hospitality, regional financial services and industrial SMEs provide a setting where many family-run businesses combine short decision-making paths with strong regional ties. Imagine a hotel renegotiating maintenance terms with an industrial SME: before the meeting, the manager announces that the review will cover verified information and the reasons for trade-offs, not just the advantage secured. A relevant exercise for SHR's “Advanced Negotiation” programme is to record each significant trade-off in a table headed “available information, option selected, justification”, then measure the proportion of trade-offs supported by verifiable information. This checks the traceability of the process, not an assumed improvement in outcomes; the scenario is hypothetical. To go further: explore the Advanced Negotiation training in Lucerne in the canton of Lucerne, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
In pictures: Advanced Negotiation in Lucerne
- advanced negotiation
- Lucerne
- research
- training lucerne