NEG 7310 Module 5 Midterm: Emotion, Communication and Power in a Compressor Dispute Example

From an Angry Call to a Working Agreement: Emotion, Communication and Power in a Supplier Dispute

Student Name

Master of Business Administration, Thomas Edison State University

NEG-7310: Negotiations

Mentor Name

Month Day, Year

From an Angry Call to a Working Agreement: Emotion, Communication and Power in a Supplier Dispute

The Dispute

Over one year, fourteen scroll compressors from our main supplier failed within months of installation in rooftop units. Each failure cost us a second truck roll, about $900 in labor, and strained relations with customers. The supplier's warranty covered the part but not labor. I asked for labor reimbursement of $12,600 and faster replacements.

The First Call

I opened the first call angry, and I meant to be. Van Kleef et al. (2004) found that negotiators facing an angry opponent tend to concede more, because they infer the opponent has high limits. But the effect has conditions; other research shows anger can backfire when the target has good alternatives or sees the anger as unjustified. The supplier's regional manager had alternatives, other contractors, and believed the failures came from our installation practices. He became defensive, cited the warranty and ended the call. Lewicki et al. (2011) note that emotions in negotiation are information that the other party reads and responds to; my anger told him I saw him as the problem, so he defended himself.

Perception and Biases

Both of us fell into biases the textbook describes. I attributed the failures to the supplier's product; he attributed them to our technicians. Each of us explained the other's behavior by character and our own by circumstance, a familiar attribution pattern. We also both framed the dispute as a loss to avoid, which made concession feel costly. Neither of us asked for the other's data before forming a view. Thompson and Hastie (1990) showed that negotiators assume opposed interests; we both assumed that any gain for one side would be the other's loss.

Power

Before the second meeting, I analyzed power. Lewicki et al. (2011) distinguish sources of power, including information, position in the network of relationships and alternatives. We bought about $410,000 a year in equipment from this supplier, roughly 8 percent of its regional sales, a dependence I had not used in the first call. We also had data: serial numbers, installation dates and failure logs for all fourteen units. Magee et al. (2007) found that people who feel powerful are more likely to initiate negotiations and make the first offer, and that this can help them, so I proposed the second meeting myself and came with a written proposal.

Preparation Before the Second Meeting

The first call had no preparation behind it; the second had a full plan. Using the planning steps from Module 4, I listed the issues, labor costs, replacement speed, the units still in the field and future quality, and ranked them. Labor money mattered less to us than replacement speed, because each day a rooftop unit sits dead risks a customer. I estimated the supplier's interests as protecting its warranty policy from precedent, keeping our volume and avoiding a wider quality problem. My best alternative was moving our compressor purchases to a competing distributor, which would cost about 4 percent more and a month of disruption; that set my resistance point at a credit of about $6,000 with faster replacements, below which switching would be better.

Communication in the Second Meeting

I opened the second meeting by acknowledging that some failures might stem from installation, and proposed that we review the data together. The textbook emphasizes active listening and reframing, which shift a dispute from blame toward problem solving. Reframing the question from "who is at fault" to "why are these compressors failing" changed the conversation. The choice of channel mattered too. The textbook notes that negotiating by phone or email strips away cues that help parties read each other. The first call happened by phone while I was driving between jobs; the second meeting was in person at our shop, with the failed compressors on a bench where both engineers could examine them. Seeing the parts together did more than any argument. The data showed that twelve of the fourteen failures came from one production batch, which the supplier's engineer then traced to a faulty valve.

The Agreement

The distributive element, money, settled at $10,800 rather than $12,600, because two failures were not from the batch. The integrative elements, data sharing, training and inspections, created value for both sides and protected a relationship worth far more than the dispute. Splitting the labor claim would have been the obvious compromise, about $6,300 each. The data made a better division possible: the supplier paid for the failures its batch caused, and we absorbed the two that may have been ours. That division rested on a standard both sides accepted, which is why neither felt beaten.

Lessons

Anger cost us a month and nearly the relationship. Preparation, power used through data rather than threats, and reframing produced an agreement better than my original demand. Fisher et al. (2011) urge negotiators to insist on objective criteria; the failure data served exactly that purpose, turning a contest of wills into a shared analysis. I also learned to separate the person from the problem: the regional manager had not built the faulty valve, and treating him as its author made him its defender.

References

Fisher, R., Ury, W., & Patton, B. (2011). Getting to yes: Negotiating agreement without giving in (3rd ed.). Penguin.

Lewicki, R. J., Barry, B., & Saunders, D. M. (2011). Essentials of negotiation (5th ed.). McGraw-Hill Irwin.

Magee, J. C., Galinsky, A. D., & Gruenfeld, D. H. (2007). Power, propensity to negotiate, and moving first in competitive interactions. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 33(2), 200-212. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167206294413

Thompson, L., & Hastie, R. (1990). Social perception in negotiation. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 47(1), 98-123. https://doi.org/10.1016/0749-5978(90)90048-E

Van Kleef, G. A., De Dreu, C. K. W., & Manstead, A. S. R. (2004). The interpersonal effects of anger and happiness in negotiations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 86(1), 57-76. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.86.1.57