Episode 4: Explaining Differences in Men and Women's Use of Unethical Tactics in Negotiations

Emerging evidence suggests that competitiveness and empathy explain men's greater willingness to use unethical tactics in negotiations. We tested whether and how robustly they do with three distinct studies, run with three distinct populations. Simultaneous mediation analyses generally, but not completely, confirmed our expectations. In Study 1, only competitiveness mediated sex differences in unethical negotiation tactics among Chilean business students. Although empathy also explained willingness to use unethical negotiation tactics, the Chilean men and women did not differ in this regard. In Study 2, competitiveness and empathy both mediated sex differences in American business students’ intentions to lie to a client, but competitiveness explained greater variance. In Study 3, both factors explained sex differences in lying to bargaining partners for real stakes by working-age Americans. Our findings suggest that competitiveness and empathy each explain sex differences in willingness to use unethical tactics, but the former does so more consistently.

Show Notes

Jason Pierce is an Assistant Professor of Management at the University of North Carolina Greensboro. He earned his Ph.D. in Management at Indiana University and has held other faculty appointments at the University of Southern Mississippi and Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez in Santiago, Chile. Prior to beginning his academic career, Jason obtained his undergraduate degree in Computer Science from Georgia Tech and worked as a network engineer for Nortel Networks. 

Jason’s areas of expertise now include ethically charged responses to conflict, philosophy of science, and organizational alignment. His current projects cover topics such as sex-differences in negotiation tactics, categorizing as a scientific tool, and managerial problem solving. Jason has published research on these topics in prestigious journals such as Psychological Science, the Journal of Applied Psychology, the Journal of Management, Journal of Business Ethics, and Negotiation & Conflict Management Research. 

In addition to conducting research, Jason is an international teacher and trainer. He has taught courses on the topics of managerial decision making, negotiation and conflict resolution, organizational behavior, and organizational alignment in executive, graduate, and undergraduate business programs to students in Europe, Latin America, and the United States.
 
Article Citation:
Pierce, J. R., & Thompson, L. (2018). Explaining differences in men and women's use of unethical tactics in negotiations. Negotiation and Conflict Management Research, 11(4), 278–297. https://doi.org/10.1111/ncmr.12135

What is Article to Audio?

“Article to Audio” features interviews with scholars about their research on negotiation and conflict management from our field's top academic journals. We have specifically designed the format and content of the episodes to be rooted in research findings but avoiding complicated jargon so that the series can be useful for a variety of audiences, including upper-year undergraduates, graduate students, and the general public.