Political skill in job negotiations: a two-study constructive replication

• Published in: The International journal of conflict management Vol. 26; no. 1; pp. 2 - 24
• Main Authors: Solga, Marc, Betz, Jaqueline, Düsenberg, Moritz, Ostermann, Helen
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Bowling Green Emerald Group Publishing Limited 09-02-2015
• Subjects: Bargaining; Conflict management; Emotional intelligence; Emotions; Employment; HR & organizational behaviour; Industrial/labour relations; Interdependence; Job hunting; Laboratories; Negotiation; Negotiations; Politics; Preferences; Problem solving; Recall of government officials; Sales managers; Simulation; Success; Wages & salaries; Workplaces; Actor–Partner Interdependence Model; Moderated mediation; Job negotiation; Political skill; Social effectiveness
• ISSN: 1044-4068; 1758-8545
• DOI: 10.1108/IJCMA-02-2012-0022

Purpose
– This paper aims to investigate the effects of political skill in a specific workplace setting – the job negotiation. The authors expected negotiator political skill to be positively related to distributive negotiation outcome, problem-solving as a negotiation strategy to mediate this relationship and political skill to also moderate – that is amplify – the link between problem-solving and negotiation outcome.
Design/methodology/approach
– In Study 1, a laboratory-based negotiation simulation was conducted with 88 participants; the authors obtained self-reports of political skill prior to the negotiation and – to account for non-independence of negotiating partners’ outcome – used the Actor–Partner Interdependence Model for data analysis. Study 2 was carried out as a real-life negotiation study with 100 managers of a multinational corporation who were given the opportunity to re-negotiate their salary package prior to a longer-term foreign assignment. Here, the authors drew on two objective measures of negotiation success, increase of annual gross salary and additional annual net benefits.
Findings
– In Study 1, the initial hypothesis – political skill will be positively related to negotiator success – was fully supported. In Study 2, all three hypotheses (see above) were fully supported for additional annual net benefits and partly supported for increase of annual gross salary.
Originality/value
– To the authors' best knowledge, this paper presents the first study to examine political skill as a focal predictor variable in the negotiation context. Furthermore, the studies also broaden the emotion-centered approach to social effectiveness that is prevalent in current negotiation research.