Modeling Power Distance and Individualism/Collectivism in Negotiation Team Dynamics

Abstract

It has been documented in the social sciences that cultural factors affect how people negotiate and behave in negotiations. Despite the importance of culture in the business world and politics, there is a lack of computational models that help to analyze how cultural factors affect negotiation. Moreover, while many negotiations take place between teams, there is a dearth of computational models for team negotiations. In this paper we present the first attempt to provide a computational model which takes into account cultural factors in a team negotiation setting. The model considers how two important cultural dimensions, power distance and individualism/collectivism, affect team negotiation dynamics and negotiation outcomes. We conducted experiments in high/low intra-team conflict scenarios. The results are compatible with social sciences findings from team decision making.