Here are some recent updates on my research, teaching, and service activities.

2024

  • Masterclass on Sustainability Management: Delivered a talk on decision making in the context of sustainability for the launch of Webster’s MS in Sustainability Management. Our distinguished alumna Fieke Ford, the founder of the sustainable skincare brand Pericarp Beauty, joined me to discuss the challenges of fulfilling sustainability commitments and the opportunities that lie ahead. Many thanks to Webster Leiden for hosting this event!

  • Multiple grants from Negotiation and Team Resources: Honored to be the recipient of multiple grants from Negotiation and Team Resources (https://news.webster.edu/2024/tuncel_receives_three_grants_2024.php).  In particular, my collaborative work with Ayse Kocabiyikoglu and Itir Gogus, titled “Nudging for Sustainability in Supplier-Retailer Negotiations,” for which I serve as the Principal Investigator, has received funding. In this project, we explore how retailers can strategically employ decision tools, known as nudges, to enhance sustainability investments by their suppliers.

  • Faculty research grant: Awarded Webster University’s faculty research grant for my work on the Foreign Language Effect in Negotiation. Most business negotiations are conducted in English, by non-native speakers. This project looks at whether non-native speakers respond differently to common negotiation tactics, such as emotional appeals and decision framing, compared to native English speakers.

  • Faculty exchange fellowship: Received Webster University’s Sverdrup Fellowship for faculty exchange, which will allow me to spend part of Fall 2024 at Webster’s Leiden campus. I look forward to engaging with the faculty and students there and contributing to the growth of their new Master’s program in Sustainability Management.

  • Article on gender dynamics in negotiation: Alex Mislin, Lucie Prewitt, and I published an article titled When women ask, does curiosity help? in a special issue on Understanding Gender and Fostering Positive Social Change in the 21st Century in Social Sciences. In this work, we find that men and women who approach negotiations with curiosity reap the same economic benefits of asking directly, but without incurring a social cost. We also show that women feel more comfortable conveying curiosity compared to using a direct approach in their negotiations. These findings reveal that curiosity could be a tool for women when they engage in distributive negotiations (e.g., salary negotiations), to avoid the backlash of asking.

  • Invited lecture: Invited back to the Aix-Marseille Graduate School of Management in Aix-en-Provence to teach a graduate seminar in Negotiation. I enjoy teaching negotiation to this diverse group of students from various programs who are in the process of negotiating their own jobs and internships.

    2023

  • Program director role: Took on the role of Director for Master’s in Management and Leadership. I look forward to developing initiatives to best meet the needs of our students.

  • Conference proceedings and nomination. Alex Mislin, Robin Pinkley and I published a paper titled “I am curious…. Do negotiators have to give up value when the relationship matters?” in the Academy of Management Best Paper Proceedings. This paper was also nominated for the Conflict Management Division Best Paper Award at the AoM Conference in August 2023.

  • Article on mood diversity in teams: Lorna Doucet and I published an article titled Mixed Feelings: Effects of mood diversity on groups’ discussion of disconfirming information and evaluation of alternatives in Group Decision and Negotiation. We find that, in organizational groups, mood diversity improves the discussion of disconfirming information and results in better decision evaluation. Our experiment with 36 four-person groups found that diverse moods in a group improve focus on critical information and lead to a more accurate assessment of decision alternatives compared to homogenous moods. The results suggest that managers could educate individuals about the potential performance benefits associated with mood diversity in groups. For example, a group member who is in a negative mood might feel more comfortable being in that mood, and believing that their negative mood might be helpful for the team.  In the face of constant pressure to “put on a happy face,” this knowledge might create a heightened appreciation for the value of differences in team members’ moods. 

  • Article on reputation management: Peter Kim, Alyssa Han, Alex Mislin, and I published an article titled Retrospective blindspots in reputation management: Implications for perceived moral standing and trust following a transgression in Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. This research challenges the static view of how people maintain their moral standing by showing that interpretations of a target's actions are dynamic and can shift with new events. Specifically, people tend to discount the initial positive acts of a target if they are followed by negative ones, but this effect is stronger when a bad deed follows a good deed, not the other way around. This dynamic evaluation differs between assessing others and oneself, leading to varied beliefs about a target's overall morality and trustworthiness. The study highlights the role of retrospective imputation of nefarious intent in these evaluations and discusses its implications for reputation management and trust repair.

  • Promotion: Promoted to Full-Professor, starting from Fall 2024.

  • Visiting scholar: Spent Spring 2023 as a Visiting Scholar in the Faculty of Business Administration at Bilkent University during my sabbatical leave. During this time, my work on sustainability negotiations (with Ayse Kocabiyikoglu and Itir Gogus) made significant progress and we received a competitive research grant from EURAM to further advance this work.