Mind the Medium: A Qualitative Analysis of Email Negotiation

Using qualitative analysis of email transcripts, this research investigated the behavioral differences in more or less successful email negotiations. We hypothesized that proactive and reactive medium management, relationship building, positive and negative emotion transmission along with integrative and distributive behaviors would influence joint gain and subjective value in email negotiation dyads. The hypotheses were tested on simulated buyer-seller email negotiations (n = 52 dyads) from a US and a German university. Ordinary least squares regression revealed that value creating behaviors and the total amount of communication increased joint gain while reactive medium management decreased joint gain. Controlling for individual gain and individual target profit, negotiators’ global subjective value of the negotiation was negatively impacted by distributive negotiation behaviors and reactive medium management, as revealed by hierarchical linear modeling. Practical implications and future research are discussed.