Integrating Negotiation Research With Team Dynamics

This volume has explicitly positioned negotiation in the complex and challenging world of the workforce. Instead of using the well-worn terms negotiation and negotiators, Goldman and Shapiro use the more provocative and rarer employees and instead of using the vacuous terms situation and context, they use the much more meaningful terms workplace and industry. Similarly, instead of referring to negotiated outcomes, the contributors have referred to contracts (e.g., Malhotra, Chapter 13, this volume). In so doing, this important volume has reminded scholars that the study of negotiation outside the context of organizations, whether it be firms or a home business, is quite frankly not that meaningful to managers. In this commentary chapter, we reflect on how negotiation research has been an excellent student, comrade, and proponent of team and group research. We explore the synergistic relationship between negotiation research and team research and suggest ways it may continue to grow and prosper; we attempt to remain true to the grounding theme of the volume in the workplace. We use the chapters in this volume to highlight how team and group research has informed negotiation as well as speculate on new vistas for research. In truth, many or most of the researchers in this volume are aligned with both the field of negotiation and group research. Not surprisingly, the theorizing of negotiation scholars has been deeply influenced by group research in social psychology. Our commentary examines how group research has influenced negotiation research and where some opportunities may lie. We use the organizing structure of the volume to guide our selective review of team and group dynamics. Specifically, we first explore fairness and justice in the context of groups and teams and then examine emotional and affective processing, social influence, and organizational influence.