The influence of accountability on negotiation processes and outcomes in family businesses

Official URL: http://192.168.1.20/record=b1266178 (Table of Contents)

This study explored the concept of accountability and its influence on negotiation processes and outcomes in family businesses. Data for the research was collected through semi-structured interviews with seven family member managers in five family businesses in Turkey. The Family Business Commitment Scale by Carlock and Ward (2001) was also employed as a tool to assess commitment to the family firm. Interview data was content analyzed to reach three sets of findings: level of accountability of the interviewee, nature of the negotiation process and nature of the negotiation outcome. Accountability findings were determined by codifying relevant data on a scale of 1-5. Nature of the negotiation process was established through the use of the Bargaining Process Analysis (Walcott and Hopmann, 1975) in terms of whether cooperative or competitive processes characterize the negotiations. Finally, negotiation outcomes were determined through the methods used by Beriker and Pegg (2000) in terms of whether they are competitive or cooperative. Findings revealed that relationships can be established between certain components of accountability and negotiation processes and outcomes. These components were answerability, influence of family on business, family-business congruence and existence of a social relationship with the negotiation counterpart. It was seen that these components of accountability lead the negotiators to go through mixed-motive processes, where they will look neither too dominating nor too strong and finally reach satisfactory outcomes that they can easily account for. It was also observed that pressure is a strong force that is influential on accountability, however the exact implications of pressure within the context of this study could not be isolated.