Helping negotiators to overcome judgmental biases: a scenario-based survey analysis on third party direct intervention

The unique contribution of the current study is the understanding of how a third party direct intervention in a negotiation is perceived regarding its role in helping to overcome judgmental biases of the negotiators. On this account, I developed the present study, derived from the research undertaken for my doctoral dissertation, in order to understand managers’ perceptions on the integrative role of what I call direct third party intervention. The direct third party intervention can be defined as the situation when parties originally external to a negotiation – i.e. the stakeholders in an acquisition negotiation – enter the negotiation with a strong interest in the achievement, implementation and consequences of the agreement. The third party direct intervention has been found to have an important influence on the perceived creating value level and fairness level in the negotiation process, as well as on the possibility of reaching a negotiated settlement, by helping in debriefing the situation and by using integrative behavior. This intervention also helped the parties to overcome the fixed-pie error, showed along the negotiation process, which resulted in affecting the perception of fairness. In addition, the vast majority of participants perceived the third party direct intervention as useful and determinant in overcoming judgmental biases, and accepted the mediated agreement