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Situational strategic versus personal influences on negotiation medium choice: Media synchronicity theory and affect for communication channel

Ingmar Geiger (Aalen University, Aalen, Germany)
Christoph Laubert (Department of Marketing, School of Business and Economics, Freie Universitat Berlin, Berlin, Germany)

International Journal of Conflict Management

ISSN: 1044-4068

Article publication date: 28 March 2018

Issue publication date: 16 May 2018

1165

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to compare predictions from media synchronicity theory (MST) with the influence of personality variables in an attempt to explain how negotiators choose the communication media for negotiation.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors examine media choice in two scenario-based experimental studies with students (n = 209) and professionals (n = 302) in a negotiation setting. For the analysis of the data, the authors use multilevel modeling.

Findings

This study offers support for the central proposition of MST, namely, that the type of communication subtask (conveyance or convergence) determines the degree of media synchronicity needed and therefore media choice (face-to-face or email). The support for its boundary conditions and contingent situational determinants is weaker. With the affect for communication channel scale, this study also captures individual media preferences for face-to-face or email communication, which have consistent influences on negotiators’ media choice. The personal influence variables on average account for similar variance in the data compared with the MST-based determinants.

Originality/value

This study sheds new light on diverging empirical results concerning media influences in negotiation and offers some reconciling suggestions. Furthermore, this study is the first to test boundary conditions of MST. Also, it stresses the importance of negotiators’ media preferences for media choice.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Annette Güth for her help in data collection and Henning Kreis and Robert Wilken for commenting on earlier versions of this article. Elisabeth Nevins served as the copyeditor.

Citation

Geiger, I. and Laubert, C. (2018), "Situational strategic versus personal influences on negotiation medium choice: Media synchronicity theory and affect for communication channel", International Journal of Conflict Management, Vol. 29 No. 3, pp. 398-423. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCMA-06-2017-0054

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited

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