Unethical Practices in Negotiations. The Confrontation between Internal and External Factors

Most of the negotiators have a tendency to complain about the unethical aspects of the tactics used by their counterparts while, as the same time, they are mostly unaware of the sources of influence of their own vision of negotiation and practices. The levels of honesty, trust and therefore cooperation are influenced by many factors like the uncertainty of the situation, the objectives, stakes and interests, the level of power, the negotiator's personality and also by the orientation given from the very beginning of the relationship. When negotiation is reduced to a confrontation of power, participants rely on coercive measures, using different kinds of threats or make false promises and bluff in order to establish a more acceptable balance of power. Can unethical practices always be attributed to personal characteristics or also be justified by the requirements of the situation? Drawing on concepts from several disciplines, our first intention in this paper is to clarify the sources of influence leading negotiators to unethical practices in opposition sometimes with their vision of the relationship. Then we will examine some aspects of the attribution process enabling participants to make causal explanations about unethical practices in order to uncover new hypotheses for experimental research.