The effect of communication medium on negotiation performance

Concepts of media efficiency and media richness are employed to describe the impact of communication media on two key aspects of negotiation behavior—reducing uncertainty about the task, and managing equivocality about negotiator's bargaining orientation. A controlled experiment was conducted to examine how the use of either audio or text forms of verbal communication, and the presence or absence of visual communication, impacts negotiation performance in a bilateral monopoly task. Each member of a pair of negotiators received private instructions either to maximize joint profit (a cooperative bargaining orientation) or to maximize individual profit (an individualistic bargaining orientation). Negotiation performance was measured via the total amount of relative cooperativeness of verbal communication and joint profit. In the audio mode as opposed to the text mode, the total amount of verbal communication and joint profit was increased. In the presence of visual communication the relative cooperativeness and joint profit of pairs of individualistic negotiators was less than that of cooperative negotiators. In the absence of visual communication the relative cooperativeness and joint profit of pairs of individualistic negotiators was no less than that of cooperative negotiators. In sum the findings suggest that uncertainty regarding the logical structure of the task was reduced primarily via verbal communciation, while equivocality regarding the bargaining orientation of the other negotiator was reduced primarily via visual communication. The implications for group decision and negotiation research and practice are explored.