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Symposium

Ethics in Negotiation: Causes and Consequences

    Published Online:28 Feb 2019https://doi.org/10.5465/amp.2018.0043

    Abstract

    Why do negotiators act ethically or unethically? What happens after they do? Despite accumulating evidence on the causes and consequences of ethical and unethical behavior in non-negotiation situations, surprisingly few attempts have been made to examine these issues systematically within the negotiation context. This is problematic because it contributes to the somewhat stale viewpoint that unethical negotiation behavior is both inevitable and uniformly harmful. It also impedes progress in both the negotiation and the behavioral ethics literatures and limits our field’s ability to train ethical negotiators. As a step toward refreshing the field’s perspective on the causes and consequences of ethical and unethical negotiation behavior, the current symposium assembles four papers by leading scholars of ethics and negotiation. Collectively, they aim to provide a bird’s-eye view on the numerous causes (e.g., moral character, ethical fading, environmental cues) and surprisingly diverse consequences attending ethical and unethical negotiation, both reviewing current knowledge and looking to the future. Overall, we suggest that unethical behavior is not inevitable in negotiation nor necessarily detrimental for either negotiator. Rather, science can reliably anticipate negotiators’ ethical choices and the consequences that attend them—and urgently should.

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