When People Are the Means: Negotiating with Respect

Abstract Most scholarship on negotiation ethics has focused on the topics of deception and disclosure. This article argues for considering a related, but distinct, ethical domain within negotiation ethics. That domain is the ethics of orientation. In contrast to most forms of human interaction, a clear purpose of negotiation is to convince the other party to take an action on one’s behalf, or at least to explore that possibility. This gives rise to a core ethical tension in negotiation that the article calls the object-subject tension: How does one reconcile the fact that the other party is a potential means to one’s ends with general ethical requirements for treating people? In response, the article argues that there is a general moral duty to respect other people, a duty that is not overridden by the fact of negotiation. This article examines the nature of this duty and its implications for both direct principal-to-principal negotiations and legal negotiations conducted indirectly through lawyers.