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  1. Dynamic Negotiated Exchange during Times of Crisis

Dynamic Negotiated Exchange during Times of Crisis

Over the past three decades, social and organizational psychologists have proposed several different models describing how humans resolve interpersonal and intergroup conflicts through the practice of negotiation (Druckman and Olekalns 2013; Korobkin 2014; Thompson 2013). Negotiation has been defined by Brett as “the process by which people with conflicting interests determine how they are going to allocate resources or work together in the future” (2007, 1). Negotiation is viewed by social scientists as such a pervasive part of our social lives that Max Bazerman and his colleagues once declared that most interpersonal interactions in social relationships, no matter the context nor the scale, reflect some aspect of negotiation processes (Bazerman et al. 2000). Models of negotiation describe the process of conflict resolution, outlining at least five steps—and sometimes more, depending on the model—that both parties entering into a negotiation must take. These five stages of negotiation include preparation, exchange of information, bargaining, reaching conclusions, and executing the terms of the agreement.

Our review of the major models of negotiation has identified a significant omission in most models, namely, a focus on the antecedent conditions that give rise to negotiation. Models of negotiation presume that two parties entering into a negotiation are in conflict, unhappy, and in need of resolution processes that negotiation can provide (Reif and Brodbeck 2021). The DNE model conceptualizes negotiation as embedded in the social relationship at all times and posits that informal conversations regarding the health of a relationship play a pivotal role in shaping the evolving nature of the relationship. In this way our DNE model dovetails with Bazerman et al.’s (2000) conceptualization of negotiation, either implied or otherwise, as deeply rooted in every social relationship. Our model proposes that a central mechanism for triggering a negotiation resides in informal conversations about the quality of the relationship and what can be done to improve that quality. These informal social communications may or may not precede more formal negotiation protocols described by models of negotiation.

As early as 1950, Leon Festinger offered a theory of informal social communications in which he noted the importance of such communications in helping social groups relieve stress and pressure within those groups. These informal communications help groups reach three goals that groups are pressured to accomplish: the goal of achieving uniformity of beliefs, the goal of achieving group aspirations, and the goal of remediating members’ negative emotional states. In a fascinating way, Festinger’s analysis of these informal communications paved the way for his formulation of two other groundbreaking theories: social comparison theory in 1954, in which people in groups strive to evaluate how they are doing by comparing their lives with those of others, and cognitive dissonance theory in 1957, in which discrepancies in compared outcomes produce both distress and ways to alleviate that distress. These three formulations of Festinger from the 1950s serve as kingpins of our DNE model in their emphasis on the processes that describe how groups and organizations experience stress and growth as a result of negotiated interpersonal communications.

How did these informal social communications manifest during the COVID-19 pandemic? Through social media, of course. When the pandemic struck in March 2020, while much of the world shut down and stayed at home during lockdowns, hospitals and health clinics were slammed with patients suffering from the virus (Pabon 2020). Health care personnel took to Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, sharing their disturbing stories of stress and trauma. Emergency room nurses and doctors tweeted their experiences dealing with desperately ill patients without sufficient PPE, ventilators, beds, rooms, and staffing (Gilligan 2021). Alexander (2020) tweeted, “You can’t send four million people into a wartime-equivalent situation without there being psychological consequences.” Other media posts expressed displeasure with the “hero” label as a form of compensation for the sacrifices made by workers. “Posters calling us ‘heroes’ have always felt like a deflection from policy changes and true support” (Anderson and Turbin 2021, 1).

These informal social communications, expressing inequity in the hero–recipient relationship, served as important precursors to more formal negotiation processes. Social media posts brought awareness to the public about the inequity of the exchange relationship between heroic leaders of the pandemic and the society they were serving. This awareness is a crucial and necessary catalyst for any type of intervention in a crisis situation. In their multistage model of bystander intervention, Latane and Darley (1970) argued that the first step that any potential helper must take before engaging in a helping response is to notice the situation. This attention is an essential foundation for taking any action. Social media activity centering on the dire conditions in hospitals in March 2020 was intense and relentless, and it brought worldwide attention to the plight of frontliners. These informal social communications led directly to the second stage of helping, as proposed by Latane and Darley, namely, the step of correctly interpreting the situation as an emergency. While conservative news outlets downplayed the severity of the problem for frontliners, more centrist and progressive news agencies made the desperation of frontliners clear to viewers, readers, and listeners (Budak, Muddiman, and Stroud 2021). Most reasonable members of society recognized that a terrible and unprecedented crisis was unfolding in hospitals almost everywhere, especially the hardest hit areas of the country and the world.

The third stage of Latane and Darley’s (1970) model centers on taking responsibility for helping. Hospitals and health clinics, along with good Samaritans with access to much-needed medical resources and ways to deliver them, were taking some actions, but often these measures fell woefully short of meeting the needs of patients and medical personnel. Many U.S. hospitals, operating more with a profit motive than with a humanitarian motive, were unable or unwilling to take sufficient responsibility for improving the working conditions of health care personnel. Even when hospital administrators sought to “do the right thing,” they were often constrained by lack of resources. For example, rural hospitals or those who serve low-income constituents may have been particularly impacted by resource constraints (Christensen 2021). Other more affluent hospitals were slow to accept responsibility for dangerous workplace conditions, in some cases warning, disciplining, and firing health care workers who posted descriptions of their rapidly deteriorating workplace conditions on social media (Scheiber and Rosenthal, 2020). This vindictive pushback from hospital administrators is consistent with research showing that whistleblowers are often the most severely mistreated heroes in our society (Richardson and McGlynn 2021). In short, the attempt at negotiating a resolution to outrageously unsafe working conditions was rejected by some hospitals who were either in denial about the problem (stage 1 of Latane and Darley’s model), incapable of interpreting the situation as a crisis (stage 2), or unwilling to assume responsibility for the ongoing problem (stage 3).

Examining how events during the pandemic mirrored the stages of Latane and Darley’s (1970) bystander intervention models brought the efficacy, and, often, the lack of efficacy, of the informal communication-based negotiation process into bold relief. Social media posts initiated informal conversations, attracting designations of the “hero” label from some of the public while eliciting pushback and resistance to acknowledging the extent of the crisis from others. At times both the health care industry and government agencies were aware of the situation, were correctly interpreting the situation as an emergency, and were taking responsibility—but they were still paralyzed and handcuffed because they had neither the ability nor the resources to take appropriate helpful actions. This is the last step in Latane and Darley’s model—the action step. For the average citizen, the only action that could be taken was to assign the hero label to frontliners. Most people were aware of the extent of the horrific conditions facing frontliners, and seemingly the only good or commodity they could offer was to sing the praises of heroic health care workers even if those workers viewed these compliments as an insufficient and sometimes even a dangerous and insulting form of compensation.

Here the DNE model posits that ongoing inequity in the exchange relationship between heroic leaders and recipients must resolve itself in one of two ways: either in changes in the exchange or in the termination of the relationship. These two avenues of resolution were manifest in the health care industry during the COVID-19 pandemic, and they were assigned labels in the form of the Great Resignation (Hirsch 2021) and the Great Upgrade (Romans 2022). With regard to the Great Resignation, labor statistics showed that 20 percent of nurses and doctors left their jobs during the pandemic due to burnout, low pay, and lack of safe working conditions. Moreover, one-third of remaining nurses considered leaving their positions, including many who contemplated leaving the health care industry entirely (Hirsch 2021). “In the end,” wrote Stowell, a Massachusetts physician, “my hero complex and my deep fear of making a medical mistake pushed me to quit” (2002, 1; italics added). It is important to note that the hero complex is defined as the mindset that one must be a hero regardless of the costs to oneself. In the minds of recipients and beneficiaries of heroism, having such a mindset may be a necessary qualification for receiving the hero label, and the COVID-19 crisis led many heroes to escape from the burden of such a label.

With regard to the Great Upgrade, nurses and doctors who were deeply unhappy with the status quo made the decision to seek different employment that offered far better working conditions and improved compensation and benefits packages. One example of the Great Upgrade for nurses was found in the concept of “traveling nurses” who work in short-term roles in hospitals, clinics, and various health care facilities around the country and world. As a result of the pandemic, the salary for traveling nurses almost doubled compared to prepandemic levels. Yang and Mason (2022) estimate that as a result of traveling nurse opportunities for their nursing staff, hospitals facing staffing shortages have lost many billions of dollars to offset those shortages. Another form of the Great Upgrade has been called the Great Retention, referring to employers’ proactive efforts to retain current employees by upgrading their pay and benefits, sometimes even before employees have asked for such upgrades (Kiner 2021).

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