Influencing Knowledge Workers: The Power of Top Management. Industrial Management & Data Systems

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Priyan Khakhar & Zafar U. Ahmed (2017) The concepts of power in international business negotiations: An empirical investigation, Journal of Transnational Management, 22(1), 25-52. DOI: 10.1080/15475778.2017.1274613

This article examines “the bases of social power, namely individual information power, expert power, legitimate power, and referent power on successful international business negotiations (IBNs)” (p. 25). Since economy globalized nowadays, international business negotiations is vitals. Through conducting this study, it can assist in the selection and training of practitioners and contribute to international negotiation theory. The purpose of this research is to find out in essence, how do the bases of social power affect the international business negotiation process. An online questionnaire survey was conducted among international business executives, and they were asked to report back their most recent success negotiating experience in terms of integrative and distributive outcomes. The author assumed that exerting different power bases will lead to different negotiation process (either distributive or integrative) and furthermore trigger outcome. Overall, findings indicated that each power base do have its impact on international business negotiation and neither of them can be ignored. In response to the essay question, this article is highly helpful as it pointed out that besides expert power, other social power is still required in workplace nowadays.

This article is up to date, hence could effectively reflect current market conditions. However since international business negotiation is actually complex and involved broad issues, such as Psychology, it is therefore hard to accurately conclude the findings. This can also be regarded as the weakness of the study as the topic discussed is relatively vague compared to other reading. As a result, there are several limitations in the study. The author believed that the methodology SEM used in the study may not reveal the true complexity and dynamism of negotiations themselves. Also questions that are asked on online survey are actually couched in the researcher’s frame of reference, and hence run the great risk of missing important information that is outside that frame (Wright, 1990). This would potentially cause bias as well since the researcher may have some degree of subjectivity.

References

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Kennedy-Clark, S., Downey T-L., & Mort, P. (2006). Annotated Bibliography. The University of New South Wales: The Learning Centre.

Wright, L. (1990). Observation as a method of negotiation research [Working paper 90(27)]. Kingston, ON: Queen’s University School of Business.