2. NEGOTIATION 101 & GENDER
• Negotiation is communication
• Negotiation is iterative and occurs every day
• Over the past 30 years, shift in understanding of negotiation as a collaborative process
• Studies have found that women do indeed behave differently from men when they negotiate
• Gender vs biology
3. PERCENTAGE OF WOMEN IN LIBRARIANSHIP
1983: 87.3%
1993: 88.3%
2010: 82.8%
Source: Statistical Abstract of the United States (1983, 1993: Table 637; 2010: Table 616)
4. ASSUMPTION VS. REALITY
• Our assumptions far outstrip reality
• Ratio of women’s to men’s annual earnings:
• 60.2% of what mean earned in 1980
• 80% of what men earned in 2010
• Ten years after graduation, women earn 69%
• Babcock survey of graduating students:
• 57% of men negotiated initial salaries; 7% of women negotiated
Linda Babcock & Sara Laschever, Women Don’t Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide Princeton University
Press, 2003.
Elizabeth Agnvall, “Women and Negotiation,” HR Magazine (December 2007): 69+.
Bureau of Labor Statistics, ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/lf/aat39.txt
5. A FEW STATISTICS ….
• 2.5 times more women than men said they feel “a great deal of apprehension”
about negotiation.
• Men initiate negotiations about four times more often than women.
• 20 percent of women say they never negotiate at all, even though they recognize
negotiation as appropriate and even necessary.
http://www.womendontask.com/stats.html
6. THE PLAYGROUND STUDY
All-male, all-female pairs asked to conduct a negotiation about allocating public
money to build a children’s playground. One member as the representative from the
Parks Department, one as a representative from a community volunteer organization.
J.J. Halpern & J.M. Parks, “Vive La Difference: Differences between Males and Females in Process and
Outcomes in Low-Conflict Negotiation,” International Journal of Conflict Management 7, no. 1 (1996):
45-70.
7. PERCEPTION MATTERS
“ … it seemed that women's actual taste for cooperation — if such a taste exists — is
much less important than something else: people think women are likely to be
cooperative types.”
Carol M. Rose, "Bargaining & Gender," Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy 18, no. 2 (1995): 547+.
8. COOPERATION WORKS
“Seeking to maximize one’s own profit in any one bargaining episode may result in
short-term gain, but may eventually prove harmful to a negotiator’s bargaining
position in the long run. Thus, cooperation may be a superior bargaining tactic
because it offers long-term perspective.”
A.F. Stuhlmacher & A.E. Walters, “Gender Differences in Negotiation Outcome: A Meta-Analysis,” Personnel
Psychology 52, no. 3 (1999): 653-677.
9. WHEN COOPERATION FAILS
“It [a taste for cooperation] is just disadvantageous to have when you are dealing with others who do not
have it, or do not have as much of it, or do not have it towards you. In such instances, a taste for
cooperation can lead to a losing strategy: if you behave too cooperatively, you will wind up with the short
end of the stick.”
Carol M. Rose, "Bargaining & Gender," Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy 18, no. 2 (1995): 547+.
10. REFRAMING NEGOTIATION
• Research
• Collaboration
• Relationship-building
• Advocating for others
• Creating opportunities for mutual gain
• Coming up with alternatives to strengthen our BATNA
• Strengths-based education vs. deficit-remediation education
13. GOING WITH YOUR STRENGTHS
• Learner - People who are especially talented in the Learner theme have a great desire to learn and
want to continuously improve. In particular, the process of learning, rather than the outcome,
excites them.
• Achiever - People who are especially talented in the Achiever theme have a great deal of stamina
and work hard. They take great satisfaction from being busy and productive.
• Responsibility - People who are especially talented in the Responsibility theme take psychological
ownership of what they say they will do. They are committed to stable values such as honesty and
loyalty.
• Strategic - People who are especially talented in the Strategic theme create alternative ways to
proceed. Faced with any given scenario, they can quickly spot the relevant patterns and issues.
• Input - People who are especially talented in the Input theme have a craving to know more. Often
they like to collect and archive all kinds of information.
14. FRAMING A NEGOTIATION TO YOUR STRENGTHS
• Learner – A big part of negotiation is researching/learning about a product,
organization, or fellow negotiator.
• Achiever – A negotiated deal represents an outcome, a goal to be achieved.
• Responsibility – Organizational negotiation represents a responsibility to users as
well as stewardship of resources.
• Strategic – To have leverage in a negotiation, one needs to have alternatives to a
negotiated agreement and a strategic thinker can come up with a strong fall back
position.
• Input – Negotiation is often informed by past deals and past relationships. A hoarder
should have all the background they need to make good decisions.
So if women have a problem with negotiation and most librarians are women, by the transitive property, librarians have a problem negotiation and when a problem comes along…
Thankfully much of the same research that identifies the problems also identifies things we can do.
JILL
JILL
JILL
For the ten years after graduation statistic: even after controlling for hours, occupations, parenting, and other factors that might affect earnings, one-quarter of the pay gap remains unexplained.
JILL
JILL
Males more likely to talk about their positions (how much they wanted to see allocated to the project), with all males discussing their positions but only 17 percent of the females doing so. Males also used confrontational bargaining techniques nine times as much as women did. Females talked about personal information more than men; 92% of the females compared to 23% of the men introduced information about themselves into the negotiation. It’s important to note that the women weren’t just making small talk, however, or asking random questions about each other’s lives. The personal information the women discussed was directly relevant to what each side wanted, and introducing this information into their negotiations helped expand their shared understanding of the goals on both sides. Another interesting finding was how the negotiating teams used the case information provided to them. Whereas 50 percent of the female pairs discussed how the playground would affect a senior citizen’s home nearby (thus falling in line with women’s prescribed role as caretakers who look out for the interests of others), none of the male pairs took notice of this factor. On the other hand, 58 percent of the males by only 8 percent of the females discussed legal liability issues. This was particularly noteworthy because legal issues were not part of the case materials – the men introduced them on their own.
Ultimately, the results of the playground study suggest that men typically focus on the more competitive elements of a negotiation (discussing their positions from the outset, resorting to confrontational behavior, talking about each side’s legal responsibilities) whereas women focus more on the relational aspects – the needs of both sides and how the outcome of negotiation will affect other people, such as the senior citizens.
Bottom line: collaborative approaches work. They require relational and cooperative negotiating rather than competitive. Recognizing that women may actually have strength in this area is the first step.
Other examples:
Car dealership: I.Ayers & P. Siegelman, “Race and Gender Discrimination in Bargaining for a New Car,” American Economic Review 85, no. 3 (June 1995): 304-321.
JILL
Does gender play a role in how we negotiate? Are women more cooperative? Carol M. Rose opined in a 1995 Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy article that question whether the important issue is whether women are more cooperative than the fact that society perceives women as more cooperative: "it seemed that women's actual taste for cooperation — if such a taste exists — is much less important than something else: people think women are likely to be cooperative types." If indeed women are more cooperative or perceived as more cooperative, women could conceivably "get less" in a bargain than their male counterparts. For example, if a woman must offer a man more incentives just to begin cooperating, then she is already at the start gate with a negative number.
JILL
JILL
Rose goes on to note that a taste for cooperation is not a bad thing, and actually, it is what allows the world to work. Rose simply states: "It [a taste for cooperation] is just disadvantageous to have when you are dealing with others who do not have it, or do not have as much of it, or do not have it towards you. In such instances, a taste for cooperation can lead to a losing strategy: if you behave too cooperatively, you will wind up with the short end of the stick." Putting philosophical and societal arguments about gender differentiation aside for the moment, it is important in a difficult negotiation to determine, to the extent possible, if you are dealing with someone who is just not going to cooperate, or cooperate much. This necessitates a shift in one's negotiation strategy in order not to give away too much in an effort to resolve the matter at hand.
The authors of Women Don’t Ask reiterate this point. When both negotiators don’t share the cooperative view of a negotiation, the woman’s strategy can leave her vulnerable if the man approaches it as a win/lose situation.
Deborah Kolb and Judith Williams, in The Shadow Negotiator, describe a conflict between two doctors (male and female) in the same practice. Both doctors wanted the same week off, but only the woman worried about the damage to the relationship if they could not agree. She thought hard about how to resolve their conflict and decided to try “logrolling” or “quid pro quo” approach. She offered to let the other doctor have the week off in return for “first dibs” on the summer schedule. He accepted her concession but refused to make one in return, insisting that the second issue had nothing to do with the first. She was expecting a give-and-take interaction in which they each gave up something to get something in return (which in her case, but not in his, included good working relations in the practice). He saw the interaction as winner-take-all and interpreted her flexibility not as a desire for a favorable outcome for both but as an indication that she was “weaker”.
Let’s re-visit the playground study:
When the pairs were mixed male-female, the mixed pairs produced agreements that were no better than those produced by the all-male pairs. The females fared worse when they were negotiating with men than when they were negotiating with women, but the “pies” that the female/male pairs split up were smaller than the “pies” divided by the all-female pairs. In other words, by sharing information and working together, the all-female pairs were able to essentially “enlarge the pie.” By taking an integrative approach to the process, they were able to identify hidden benefits for both sides that went unnoticed by the pairs that took a more competitive approach.
The takeaway here? Collaborative negotiation, or the seminal “Win-Win” works. However, it is critical to recognize with whom you are negotiating, regardless of gender, to determine their willingness to cooperate and collaborate.
If indeed women are more cooperative or even if society perceives women as more cooperative AND most librarians are women, this is undoubtedly an issue we aren’t facing. To be fair, there is the disparity between the percentage of men in the profession and the percentage of men in upper administration — upper administrators are often the ones conducting the most difficult negotiations for content from vendors and publishers. Yet, Marta Mestrovic Deyrup explains in a 2004 College & Research Libraries article: "women comprise 52.1 percent of all top administrators and serve as the majority on ARL’s board of directors." The fact remains that most of us are women and we negotiate in any number of ways every day.
BETH
Knowing what the research says how do librarians improve both their negotiation skills and their perception of their own negotiation skills. One way to start is to reframe negotiation into its component parts, particularly those parts that include things that librarians are traditionally good at that make them natural negotiators:
Research – So, much of good negotiation involves understanding the stakes of the situation. How important is it for you to make a successful deal? How important is it for the person you are negotiating with? What are your options if a deal isn’t reached? What are there options? Research is something librarians have no trouble doing.
Collaboration – As Jill has mentioned really effective long-lasting negotiation looks more like collaboration than it does game play and librarians collaborate all the time
Relationship-building – This combines research and collaboration because relationship building is all about taking what you know about another party and letting it inform how you work with that party to both parties advantage.
Advocating for others – Librarians are constantly advocating for others and research has demonstrated that when women are advocating for others they do their best negotiation - Mazei, Hüffmeier, Freund, Stuhlmacher, Bilke, and Hertel (2015) A meta-analysis on gender differences in negotiation outcomes and their moderators
Creating opportunities for mutual gain – Really successful negotiations are those where both parties are getting something out of it. Librarians excel at finding this kind of symbiosis because we are inherently service organizations so we are always looking at how what we do affects others.
- Coming up with alternatives to strengthen our BATNA or Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement - Librarians are also inherently inventive. If a resource doesn’t exist, we figure out a work around! And the better your BATNA, the easier it is to walk away from a bad deal.
BETH
Ask attendees to discuss and share with each other the top five strengths that they think would be important for a good negotiator. If you aren’t sure what you think a word means, skip it.
BETH
These terms are defined by StrengthsFinder and organized into four groups. Characteristics in the influencing and relationship building categories would likely be the ones to be most valuable for a negotiator. They involve communication and competition and self-assurance which is the stereotypical negotiator profile. Now, let’s look at an example top five profile: Me.
BETH
My top five strengths. Not exactly the profile of a great negotiator, in fact, not people skill anywhere to be found.
BETH
Can you frame negotiation in terms that will appeal to my strengths?
