Trust development in traditional and online negotiations

People often experience that their own interests and the interests of their fellow beings are not the same, and thus have to decide how to solve this conflict (Hüffmeier & Hertel, 2012). One way of dealing with such a conflict are negotiations, which can take place in many different situations (e.g., contract negotiations at work, discussing with friends and deciding what to do on the weekend), which makes negotiations to an important aspect of our everyday life (Mazei & Hertel, 2016). Due to the ongoing digitalization of work processes, the number of negotiations conducted or supported by electronic communication media is increasing (Mazei & Hertel, 2016). This importance of negotiations gives rise to the question what is necessary to negotiate successfully in both traditional and electronically mediated negotiations. As previous research found that trust among negotiators leads to better negotiation outcomes (e.g., Kong, Dirks, & Ferrin, 2014) and as researchers see trust as the currency linking repeated interactions, this research project investigates how trust develops in both traditional face-to-face negotiations and online-negotiations.