Bargaining Process Research Articles

Comparative Analysis of Seafarersʼ Collective Agreements in the Republic of Croatia and Montenegro

Seafarers represent a special category of workers, since their living and working conditions differ in many respects from those of other workers. Therefore, the legal regulation of the employment status of seafarers is particularly important. In the Republic of Croatia and Montenegro, there is no comprehensive legal act regulating the working, social and living conditions of seafarers. Relevant provisions are contained in various legal regulations. Collective agreements are of crucial importance in regulating the employment status of seafarers. In the Republic of Croatia, the National Collective Agreement for Croatian Seafarers on Board Ships in the International Shipping (2021-2022) entered into force in 2021. In Montenegro, the Collective Agreement for ship crew concluded at the end of 2020 with the employer Crnogorska plovidba a.d. Kotor is still in force. In this paper, the author provides an overview of the collective bargaining process and focuses on the comparative analysis of collective agreements.

Ethnographic Study of the Marosok Tradition in the Payakumbuh Community Using Pierce Semiotic Analysis

The marosok is a tradition of buying and selling livestock using hand movements and facial expressions in the bargaining process. The marosok tradition has denotative and connotative meanings associated with Minangkabau culture. The purpose of this study was to determine the meaning of denotation and connotation of the marosok tradition with an ethnographic approach using Symbolic Interactionism Theory and semiotic analysis of Pierce. This research method is qualitative by conducting literature study and interviews using snowball sampling technique to M. Azhadi Dt. Bosa as key informant who directs researchers to Desmon Korina and Hadiyati who understand the marosok tradition in the Payakumbuh community. This study shows that the tools, hand movements and expressions in the marosok tradition have meanings that must be understood by the parties involved in the transactions. The sarong is a covering tool that shows marosok tradition is only carried out by men. Finger gestures indicate digits up to millions, increasing, or decreasing bidding. Expressions indicate approval or rejection of the offered price. The marosok tradition ends with handshake and smile between the seller and the buyer. The marosok tradition creates healthy competition where the prices are only known by the parties concerned. However, this process is not transparent, the buyer can only estimate the weight and condition of the livestock by seeing and touching the livestock directly, so the buyer must be very careful in choosing livestock with good quality. The marosok tradition must be maintained so that the media is needed to teach how to do marosok to the younger generation. Apart from being a buying and selling transaction, the marosok tradition can be used as an attraction for tourists to come to Payakumbuh.

Bargaining power of new-energy enterprises in China's credit-financing market.

The new-energy industry, which is a key area for coping with climate change, faces serious credit-financing difficulties. This study used a bilateral stochastic frontier model to measure the bargaining power of new-energy companies in China's credit-financing market. We then examined the main factors affecting the bargaining power of new-energy enterprises by comparing the results of the firms in different groups, including corporate-related factors, government policies, and financial development levels. The results showed that the bargaining power of both banks and enterprises had an important influence on the final financing price. In the bargaining process, new-energy companies were at a disadvantage, and financing prices were 17.2% higher than fair prices. The nature of state-owned enterprises hinders the improvement of the bargaining power of new-energy enterprises. Technology competence and relationships with banks are useful ways for new-energy enterprises to improve their bargaining power. In solving the financing difficulties in the credit market of new-energy enterprises, government subsidies are usually ineffective, while improving the financial development level is effective.

Non-Inclusive Trade Unionism in the Tea Estates in Assam

Abstract The state of Assam alone produces nearly 53 percent of the total tea production in India. Around one million workers are engaged in the tea industry in India. Tea – as a commercial product first cultivated and expanded by the British – is an outcome of the toil and struggle of the Adivasi workers or indigenous people of central and east India who were made to migrate to Assam under extremely brutal conditions, and they form one of the most oppressed communities in the state. This section of the population has been waging struggles to protect its rights in the state. Tea production is a labor-intensive enterprise in which trade unions should ideally play an assertive role at every stage. However, trade unions in the tea estates are gradually being questioned on their functionality in shaping industrial relations and upholding the rights of the workers. The key respondents, comprising plantation workers, trade union members, owners of the tea estates, and management staff, belong to the major tea producing districts of Assam: Dibrugarh, Sibsagar, Jorhat, Golaghat, Sonitpur, and also the lesser producing district, Kamrup. The present study ascertains the role of trade unions in dealing with the key issues faced by plantation workers, such as non-inclusion of women workers and casual workers and its failure to play an effective role in the negotiation or collective bargaining process with management and the state. It is observed that the trade unions function under the principles of the political parties and acquisition of political power is their sole motto.

Explaining the role of expertise in the state: the case of Italy

ABSTRACT The expert competences of the public bureaucracy are often seen as crucial for the quality and legitimacy of public policies. Yet, the role of expertise in the state varies greatly across countries. How can we explain the position of expert competences in the bureaucracy? The paper examines this question through a historical-institutional analysis of the Italian ministerial bureaucracy. Extending the ‘public service bargains’ framework, it argues that the role of expertise in the state is the result of a bargaining process between civil servants and the politicians that they serve. The paper shows how the peculiar position of expertise in the Italian state – the paucity of technical expertise in the permanent administration, the role of ministerial cabinets as politicized providers of expertise, and the dominance of legal training among civil servants – was the result of a chain of political and bureaucratic strategies and responses.

Hiding or Pleasing: Spousal Disagreement Among Ugandan Maize Farmers

To gain a better understanding of intrahousehold bargaining processes, surveys increasingly collect data from co-heads individually, especially on decision-making, asset ownership and labour contributions. However, answers provided by co-heads to the same set of questions often differ substantially. Recent research suggests that while some of this disagreement is due to random measurement error and cognitive bias, part also reflects non-overlapping information sets. We document differences in answers between male and female co-heads in monogamous smallholder maize-farming households in Uganda. We first confirm that not all disagreement can be explained by measurement error or bias. Using a field experiment, we then test if disagreement is due to information asymmetry between male and female co-heads. We also test an alternative explanation where discord is attributed to co-heads’ tendency to respond in line with prevailing gender norms and social customs. While the interventions did seem to reduce discord in survey response about decision-making, we do not find that information asymmetry nor reporting in line with gender norms and customs are the primary drivers of disagreement.

Learning and Applying Cooperative Solutions: A Classroom Experiment on Transportation Games

In a trade experiment, groups of students were taught how to bargain over a pie generated in a transportation game. Data collection and detailed group reports of the bargaining process allowed us to identify the type of bargaining followed and its correspondence with cooperative game theory concepts. Explicit coalitions were rather scarce (17%), although coalition stability was implied by 47.8% of the agreements. Efficiency was achieved in the vast majority (82%) of cases, whereas in 34.8% of the agreements, students used a lexicographic ordering of multiple solutions before choosing among them. Regarding the bargaining procedure, in 40% of the agreements, quantities traded were decided before profit sharing rules were negotiated, whereas in 16% of the cases they were simultaneously agreed upon. Our findings suggest that bargaining procedures often do not imply explicit coalitions. Moreover, efficiency can be achieved even in the absence of bargaining processes.

When is it OK to Break the Rules? (WITHDRAWN)

Rules are crucial for any organization, but people are sometimes encouraged to break organizational rules. Doing so often leads to more efficient, more creative organizations. It is possible, however, for rule-breaking to go too far. How do employees figure out when and whether to break the rules? We model intuitive rule-breaking by drawing on a theory of social interactions -- ``virtual bargaining'' -- that assumes that actors engaged in a simulated bargaining process when navigating the social world. In this paper, we present experimental data which suggests that rule-breaking decisions are driven by virtual bargaining. We conclude by discussing implications for organizational structure and management.

How a compensated kidney donation program facilitates the sale of human organs in a regulated market: the implications of Islam on organ donation and sale

BackgroundAdvocates for a regulated system to facilitate kidney donation between unrelated donor-recipient pairs argue that monetary compensation encourages people to donate vital organs that save the lives of patients with end-stage organ failure. Scholars support compensating donors as a form of reciprocity. This study aims to assess the compensation system for the unrelated kidney donation program in the Islamic Republic of Iran, with a particular focus on the implications of Islam on organ donation and organ sales.MethodsThis study reviews secondary documents for philosophical argumentation and ethical analysis of human organ donation and sale for transplantation.Results and discussionAccording to Islamic law, organ donation is an act of sadaqatul jariyah, and individuals are permitted to donate organs with the intention of saving lives. The commercialization of humans as organ sellers and buyers is contrary to the Islamic legal maxim eethaar, undermining donors of ‘selfless’ or ‘altruistic’ motivations. Such an act should be considered immoral, and the practice should not be introduced into other countries for the sake of protecting human dignity, integrity, solidarity, and respect. I, therefore, argue that Iran’s unrelated kidney donation program not only disregards the position of the Islamic religion with respect to the provision or receipt of monetary benefits for human kidneys for transplantation but that it also misinterprets the Islamic legal proscription of the sale of human organs. I also argue that the implementation of Iran’s unrelated kidney donor transplantation program is unethical and immoral in that potential donors and recipients engage in a bargaining process akin to that which sellers and buyers regularly face in regulated commodity exchange markets. Conversely, I suggest that a modest fixed monetary remuneration as a gift be provided to a donor as a reward for their altruistic organ donation, which is permissible by Islamic scholars. This may remove the need to bargain for increased or decreased values of payment in exchange for the organ, as well as the transactional nature of ‘buyer and seller’, ensuring the philosophy of ‘donor and recipient’ is maintained.ConclusionsOffering a fixed modest monetary incentive to organ donors would serve to increase organ supply while protecting donors’ health and reducing human suffering without legalizing the human organ trade.

Common ownership, corporate control and price competition

We examine price competition with homogeneous products in the presence of general common ownership arrangements allowing for different corporate control structures. We show that equilibria with positive profits exist (including the monopoly outcome) when the manager places the same weight on the profit of her firm as on the average profit of all the other firms. This condition supports symmetric and asymmetric stakes and can arise as an equilibrium of a network formation game or a bargaining process.

Gridlock, leverage, and policy bundling

I consider a dynamic model of bargaining where alternatives to the status quo arrive stochastically during the bargaining process, the proposer can bundle multiple alternatives into a single proposal, and a forward-looking voter elects the agenda-setter. I show that the prevailing wisdom that policy bundling reduces gridlock—by facilitating compromise across different policy areas—is incomplete. Policy bundling can also increase gridlock: a player may veto or delay a bipartisan alternative, which is unanimously preferred to the status quo, so that in the future they can bundle this same alternative with a divisive alternative that otherwise would not pass. Gridlock of this form is more likely to occur during periods of economic or political stability and, when it occurs, suggests that traditional measures of legislator ideology will overstate polarization. From the voter’s perspective, gridlock occurs at an inefficiently high frequency. This state of “excess gridlock” is driven by the voter being forward-looking and lacking commitment power.

PRECONTRACTUAL JUSTICE

ABSTRACTThis article develops a theory of just contractual relationships for a liberal society. As a liberal theory, our account is premised on liberalism's canonical commitments to self-determination and substantive equality. As a theory of contract law, it focuses on the parties’ interpersonal interactions rather than on the justice (or welfare) of the social order as a whole.Normatively, the article claims that the rules governing cases where one party experiences harsh circumstances or vulnerability during the bargaining process or operates under significant informational disadvantage must be guided by the commitment to relational justice, that is, to reciprocal respect for self-determination and substantive equality. Jurisprudentially, the article studies the systemic difficulties hindering the translation of these normative prescriptions into legal language and analyzes how they affect the form assumed by the law of precontractual justice and its institutional pedigree.

Homelessness and pretrial detention predict unfavorable outcomes in the plea bargaining process.

The present research examined homelessness, race/ethnicity, and pretrial detention in the plea bargaining process. We predicted that homelessness, Hispanic ethnicity, and pretrial detention would be positively associated with unfavorable plea bargaining outcomes. We coded defendant characteristics and plea bargaining variables for a random sample (N = 500) of criminal cases from 2016 in Santa Cruz County, California. We analyzed the associations between these variables using binary logistic and ordinal regressions. Homeless defendants were much more likely to be held in pretrial detention (odds ratio [OR] = 5.05), less likely to post bail (OR = 0.17), more likely to accept a "credit for time served" plea offer (OR = 2.26), more likely to have cases dismissed as part of a plea bargain (OR = 5.63), and more likely to receive a longer custodial sentence (OR = 2.60) than housed defendants. Defendants who did not post bail received longer custodial sentences than those who did (OR = 3.40), and pretrial detention mediated the relationship between homelessness and longer custodial sentences. White-versus-Hispanic comparisons were not statistically significant. Homelessness and pretrial detention were associated with significant adverse effects on plea-bargained case outcomes. Findings regarding homeless defendants suggest that they have divergent enough experiences from other defendants to make them a distinct defendant population whose specific experiences warrant further study. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Implementing global citizenship education policy: The bargaining process of NGOs in some European Countries

This research looked at the growing space that Global Citizenship Education (GCE) is gaining in educational policy worldwide, and at the role Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) played in GCE agenda setting and policy implementation. Based on a comparative policy analysis carried out in 10 European countries, the political agency of NGOs was explored, underlining opportunities, tensions, and challenges, especially in their contribution to national strategies to integrate GCE into national educational systems.

Two-party Bargaining Processes Based on Subjective Expectations: A Model and a Simulation Study

This work presents a model for a two-party bargaining process in which multiple offers are exchanged as the negotiation goes on, under a risk of breakdown. Typical game theoretical analyses of such settings assume the breakdown risk is known and the parties are able to calculate an initial offer that is immediately accepted by the other party, ending the negotiation. Aiming to develop a model that is closer to real-life situations, in which parties do exchange many offers in a bargaining process, we consider the parties are unable to compute the far-reaching consequences of their offers, and are guided by their subjective expectations of the outcome of the negotiation. This introduces a new perspective to the analysis of two-party bargaining processes: the confidence of the bargainers in terms of what they hope to achieve by bargaining with each other. The resulting model can be seen as an extension of the Zeuthen-Hicks bargaining model. We show analytically that under the assumption of concave utilities of both parties, the bargaining process converges to the nonsymmetric Nash bargaining solution, where the asymmetry is caused by differences in expectations. This result provides a new interpretation of the parameters of the nonsymmetric Nash bargaining solution, linking them to behavior in the bargaining process. As an additional contribution, we perform a simulation study to examine the role of confidence and to analyze the outcomes for non-concave utility functions.

THE GOVERNANCE ROLE OF LABOR UNIONS IN IMPROVING INVESTMENT EFFICIENCY

We focus on the role that labor unions can play in influencing firms’ efficiency in corporate investment decisions where investment efficiency is defined as the extent to which deviations from optimal investment levels are minimized. We argue that unions may not simply be adversaries of managements as is often believed but have incentives to monitor managements in ways similar to that of other corporate governance players. These incentives stem from the fact that unions, like other corporate stakeholders, are adversely affected by investment inefficiencies that may result from firm-level overinvestment and underinvestment decisions. Consistent with this explanation, we find that labor unionization is indeed positively associated with improvements in investment efficiency and that these effects are generally stronger in bargaining environments that are favorable to unions. For instance, union effects in improving investment efficiencies are stronger in states where the Democratic Party is more influential and in states which have not enacted legislations that restrict union activities. These results indicate that union monitoring of investment efficiency is more likely to occur through channels that are a part of unions’ collective bargaining processes. Our results are robust to different measures of investment efficiency, different empirical specifications, and endogeneity of union membership.

Breaking the right way: a closer look at how we dissolve commitments

Joint action enables us to achieve our goals more efficiently than we otherwise could, and in many cases to achieve goals that we could not otherwise achieve at all. It also presents us with the challenge of determining when and to what extent we should rely on others to make their contributions. Interpersonal commitments can help with this challenge – namely by reducing uncertainty about our own and our partner’s future actions, particularly when tempting alternative options are available to one or more parties. How we know whether a commitment is in place need not, however, be based on an explicit, identifiable event; in many cases, joint action is stabilized by individuals’ experience of an implicit sense of commitment, which is sensitive to subtle situational cues such as the effort costs invested by one or more agents. While an emerging body of work has investigated the conditions under which a sense of commitment may emerge and/or be strengthened, little attention has been paid to the conditions under which people are comfortable dissolving commitments. Specifically, what are the factors that modulate people’s motivation and which determine whether circumstances merit the dissolution of a commitment? After evaluating and rejecting the answers to this question suggested by standard approaches to commitment, we develop a new approach. The core insight which we articulate and defend is that, when considering whether new information or changing circumstances merit the dissolution of a commitment, people virtually bargain with their partners, performing a simulation of a bargaining process with the other person, including imagining how the other will feel and act towards them, and what effect this will have on them. The output of this simulation is a consciously accessible, affective state which provides motivation either to dissolve the commitment or to persist in it. Overall, our account expands our understanding of the phenomenology of being motivated to act committed in joint activity, an area in which existing accounts of interpersonal commitment fall short.

The Leading Role of the Procurator in China's Plea Bargaining Process

The leniency system for plea bargaining in China is a plea bargaining system similar to plea bargaining in the United States. With the substantial increase in the application rate of the leniency system for plea guilty and accepting punishment, the criminal policy of "fewer arrests, careful prosecution and prudence" has become its due meaning. In China, the functions of censorship, arrest and prosecution are exercised by prosecutors. The burden of powers and responsibilities of prosecutors allows prosecutors to have procedural decision-making power and substantive disposition power in the plea bargaining process, that is, the procuratorial dominance. In the context of fewer arrests, prudent prosecution and prudent detention, prosecutors have greater discretion over arrest and prosecution during the plea negotiation process, coupled with the high adoption rate of sentencing suggestions in practice, the expansion of prosecutors’ substantive disposition powers, and the procuratorial dominance further highlighted. However, we must clarify the relationship between procuratorial power and sentencing power, clarify the status and responsibilities of prosecutors, and further improve the leading role of prosecutors.

The paradox of social interaction: Shared intentionality, we-reasoning, and virtual bargaining.

Social interaction is both ubiquitous and central to understanding human behavior. Such interactions depend, we argue, on shared intentionality: the parties must form a common understanding of an ambiguous interaction (e.g., one person giving a present to another requires that both parties appreciate that a voluntary transfer of ownership is intended). Yet how can shared intentionality arise? Many well-known accounts of social cognition, including those involving “mind-reading,” typically fall into circularity and/or regress. For example, A’s beliefs and behavior may depend on her prediction of B’s beliefs and behavior, but B’s beliefs and behavior depend in turn on her prediction of A’s beliefs and behavior. One possibility is to embrace circularity and take shared intentionality as imposing consistency conditions on beliefs and behavior, but typically there are many possible solutions and no clear criteria for choosing between them. We argue that addressing these challenges requires some form of we-reasoning, but that this raises the puzzle of how the collective agent (the “we”) arises from the individual agents. This puzzle can be solved by proposing that the will of the collective agent arises from a simulated process of bargaining: agents must infer what they would agree, were they able to communicate. This model explains how, and which, shared intentions are formed. We also propose that such “virtual bargaining” may be fundamental to understanding social interactions.

Asymmetries in the Bargaining Process

Asymmetries in the Bargaining Process