EXECUTIVE NEGOTIATIONS : A COMPARATIVE CASE ANALYSIS OF SPEECH ACT RHETORIC AND CONTRACTUAL RISK

Abstract

This research article investigates how organizational leaders employ social speech acts — specifically thanking, apologizing, bragging, and blaming — during high-stakes negotiations and how these linguistic choices influence the structure of final contractual agreements. Utilizing a comparative multi-case study design, we analyzed five major negotiation episodes spanning corporate mergers, labor disputes, and international policy agreements. Through systematic thematic analysis of 847 coded speech instances extracted from transcripts, press conferences, and internal communications, we identified distinct patterns linking speech act frequency ratios to contract outcomes. Our findings reveal that negotiations dominated by thanking and apologizing speech acts resulted in trust-based, relational contracts 78% of the time, while those characterized by bragging and blaming produced penalty-based, transactional agreements in 82% of cases. The study contributes a Behavioral Taxonomy of Negotiation that explains how leaders' linguistic choices create path dependencies, often resulting in suboptimal contractual outcomes. Recommendations for practitioners include speech act awareness training, real-time linguistic monitoring during negotiations, and structured reflection protocols to mitigate cognitive biases embedded in negotiation rhetoric.