The impact of collectivism and uncertainty avoidance on concession frames in negotiations

• Autor(a) principal: Magalhães, Mariana Isabel dos Santos
• Data de Publicação: 2014
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.14/17279
• topic: Domínio/Área Científica::Ciências Sociais::Economia e Gestão

The aim of the present master’s thesis is to investigate framing effects in negotiation across cultures. This research analyses the potentially opposing effects of collectivism and uncertainty avoidance on concession frames in negotiations. Concession frames refer to presenting a concession in negotiation as emphasizing its costliness to the conceder versus its benefit to the receiver. Specifically, this thesis explored two contrasting viewpoints. On one hand, it is possible that a culture high on uncertainty avoidance may reciprocate the cost frame less as it is associated with ambiguity compared to the benefit frame. On the other, it is possible that collectivism, with its emphasis on self-sacrifice for the good of the group, might make receivers of the cost frame, reciprocate more than the benefit frame. This thesis tests these two contrasting predictions with participants from cultures high on both of these cultural dimensions, Portugal and Qatar in two experimental studies. The data revealed that receivers of the cost frame reciprocated their concessions more and had less negative views of their counterpart compared to receivers of the benefit frame. These findings suggest that collectivism must be the important dimension for the use of concession frames and are consistent with previous research conducted in North America (individualist society), which found that the cost frame is viewed less favorably than the benefit frame. The available evidence shows that framing effects in negotiation are subject to change around the world.