Society & Culture - Posted by Neil Schoenherr-WUSTL on Wednesday, April 13, 2011 10:44 - 2 Comments 
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(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Home field scores in office debates
Discussing office politics in one's own space has substantial benefits, but whether it's because a person in his or her own environment performs better or because a visitor performs worse is unclear. (Credit: iStockphoto)
WASHINGTON U.-ST. LOUIS (US) — Negotiating on home turf has a distinct advantage, but confidence on the part of the visiting team goes a long way in leveling the playing field.
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The text of this article by Futurity is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives License.
“Parties who negotiate on their home field can be expected to claim between 60 percent and 160 percent more value than the visiting party,” says Markus Baer, assistant professor of organizational behavior at Washington University in St. Louis.
“There was surprisingly little systemic research examining whether location matters in negotiation,” Baer says. “And no study explains why it would matter. Does a person in their own environment perform better, or does a visitor to their office perform worse? As a result, home field advantage remains one of the least understood phenomena in negotiation.”
The study is published in the journal Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.
Baer and Graham Brown of the University of British Columbia, conducted a series of experiments to determine the breadth of the advantage.
In the first, students assumed the status of “resident” and were taken to a private office where they were given 20 minutes to make the office their own by choosing a chair, putting their name outside the office, choosing posters to put up, writing their schedule on a board, and logging into a computer to check their email. They were also given a key to the office.
They were then told they would be negotiating with a fellow student over the price of a pound of coffee.
Participants assuming the role of a “visitor” were told that they would be negotiating with a fellow student who had an office because he or she was entering data for a professor in the department thus leading them to believe that the “resident” party had a permanent claim to the office.
Residents clearly outperformed visitors. By creating a third condition—a “neutral party” who was led to believe that the resident party did not have a permanent claim to the office but just happened to have arrived a little earlier—the authors were able to also show that the home-field advantage may be due both to a resident advantage and a visitor disadvantage.
That is, residents did better than a neutral party, who, in turn, outperformed visitors.
The second experiment examined the role of confidence in explaining exactly why the home turf advantage arises. It was designed exactly as the first, however before the negotiation, participants took a questionnaire designed to measure confidence.
The advantage of residents over visitors in distributive negotiations can at least partly be explained by the different levels of confidence residents and visitors are likely to have from knowing that they will be negotiating on their home field or on someone else’s territory.
In the final experiment, visitors’ confidence levels were manipulated by having students provide answers to a fake assessment. They were told that based on the assessment, their negotiating skills were quite high and they should do well in the negotiation.
Boosting visitor’s confidence levels before the negotiation was shown to help eliminate the home field advantage.
“Location is an important factor to consider when examining the forces shaping outcomes of distributive negotiations and, therefore, should be incorporated into existing approaches to negotiation,” Baer writes.
“Confidence plays a critical role in any negotiation, regardless of where it takes place,” Baer counters.
“Anything a person entering a negotiation can do to boost his or her confidence is a good thing. Something as simple as participating in negotiation training may work to minimize the disadvantage of negotiating on someone else’s home turf.”
More news from Washington University in St. Louis: http://news-info.wustl.edu/
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2 Comments
wimpy
Dear Wimpy,
Actually, when most patients see a bunch of certificates on the wall they tend to assume the doctor knows a lot and lose confidence. I had one associate who had over 260 certificates to awe his patients. Most of them were only to show he was a member of various organizations. He was an excellent doctor but hated to answer patient’s questions. Negotiations take many forms.
Preparing for negotiation could have lots of uses. Besides business negotiations, it would be interesting to observe how the home-field advantage might apply to physician – patient interactions, teacher – student interactions,or bureaucrat – common citizen to name a few. For example, are patients offered more solutions by their doctors if they come prepared with some of their own?