Negotiating by e-mail

Who has not typed out an angry reply to an e-mail message, hit the send button – and then regretted it? Surely no technology has led to so many conflicts and lost friendships as electronic mail. But nowhere is e-mail more dangerous than in negotiations.

Experiments by Michael Morris, an academic at Stanford Business School, and a group of colleagues have now demonstrated what many people have always thought: negotiations are more likely to go well if they are conducted, at least in part, face-to-face, rather than between strangers with keyboards and screens. E-mail is not necessarily a bad way to negotiate, but the research suggests that it needs to be used carefully.

Together with Leigh Thompson, of the Kellogg Graduate Business School at Northwestern University, and several other academics, Mr. Morris studied mock negotiations that used only e-mail and compared them with ones where there was a brief getting-to-know-you telephone. Other experiments found that electronic negotiations were easier when negotiators began by swapping photographs and personal details, or when they already knew each other.

From The Economist

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