Relationships and Negotiations in Context

R elationships, any form of social tie between parties, have become a common theme in negotiation research. A query in PsychINFO for articles between 1995 and 2005 that included both "negotiation" and "relationships" as keywords resulted in 422 citations. ¹ In social psychological studies, friends are compared to strangers (e.g., Halpern, 1994; McGinn & Keros, 2003; Thompson & DeHarpport, 1998), those from the same school are compared to those from different schools (e.g., Thompson, Valley, & Kramer, 1995), and those negotiating face to face are compared to those dealing with nameless, faceless others (e.g., McGinn, Thompson, & Bazerman, 2003; Moore, Kurtzberg, Thompson, & Morris, 1999). In sociology, arm's-length transactions—those between actors who share little familiarity or affect and no prolonged past or expected future social ties—are differentiated from socially embedded transactions—those facilitated by either direct or indirect social relationships between the actors (Coleman, 1988; Granovetter, 1974; Uzzi, 1999). Even economists are starting to view social ties between parties in economic transactions as within their purview (Manski, 2000).