Interactional justice, negotiator outcome satisfaction, and desire for future negotiations: R‐E‐S‐P‐E‐C‐T at the negotiating table

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to explore the relationship between procedural, interpersonal, informational, and distributive justice and negotiator outcome satisfaction and desire for future negotiations (DFNs).

Design/methodology/approach

This research invokes and builds theories suggesting a link between perceptions of fair treatment and counterfactual generation. Data come from freely interacting negotiating dyads comprised of undergraduate students.

Findings

One's own outcomes obtained, procedural, informational, and distributive justice perceptions each uniquely predicted negotiator outcome satisfaction. Procedural and informational justice perceptions also indirectly affected outcome satisfaction through their effect on distributive justice perceptions. In turn, outcome satisfaction, and informational and interpersonal justice perceptions each uniquely predicted DFNs.

Research limitations/implications

While this study reveals an important set of effects for study, it is correlational in nature. Future research should experimentally manipulate fair treatment to provide a true experiment and should also test the proposed mediators.

Practical implications

This paper suggests that listening to the other party, treating him or her with respect and dignity, and explaining oneself can have powerful consequences for the other party's outcome satisfaction and DFNs. Each of these, in turn, can affect one's own long run well‐being.

Originality/value

This is the first empirical study linking procedural and informational justice perceptions and negotiator outcome satisfaction. It is one of the few studies exploring a unique relationship between outcome satisfaction and procedural justice and may be the only one doing so with interactional justice in any setting. It investigates the effects of perceived fair treatment among relative equals rather than in the context of superiors and subordinates.

Citation

Kass, E. (2008), "Interactional justice, negotiator outcome satisfaction, and desire for future negotiations: R‐E‐S‐P‐E‐C‐T at the negotiating table", International Journal of Conflict Management, Vol. 19 No. 4, pp. 319-338. https://doi.org/10.1108/10444060810909284