Bargaining Strategy Research Articles

From London to Bretton Woods; Sources of Change in Bargaining Strategies and Outcomes

ABSTRACTOur most prominent theories of international bargaining miss elements essential for understanding national bargaining strategies and international outcomes. In particular they lack sufficient mechanisms of change over time. A focused contrast between the London economic and monetary conference of 1933 and the Bretton Woods conference of 1944 suggests three new dynamic hypotheses. (1) Changes, especially extreme ones, in national market conditions are likely to shift the state's bargaining strategy sharply even if its relative international position has not changed. A slump will produce a more exploitative strategy, while a boom will encourage either a passive or an expansive strategy. (2) Painful national experience running contrary to prevailing policy ideas is likely to discredit those ideas among politicians and officials, turn them toward alternative doctrines, and lead to corresponding strategy changes. The ideas most likely to spread politically are ones which had predicted the currrent problem, and those whose advocates mount the most sophisticated publicity campaign. (3) International technical disagreement can pose a decisive impediment to intergovernmental agreement, while in some conditions at least technical convergence facilitates official agreement.

Deterrence Failure and Crisis Escalation

This study builds on earlier work on extended (third-party) immediate deterrence. We analyze fifty-eight cases and summarize previous findings that extended deterrence is likely to succeed when the immediate or short-term balance of forces favors the defender, when any previous crisis involving the same adversaries resulted in stalemate rather than clear victory for either, and when the military and diplomatic bargaining process is characterized by tit-for-tat or firm-but-flexible strategies rather than bullying or appeasement. The long-term balance of forces and the defender's possession of nuclear weapons make little difference. We then focus on cases where deterrence has failed and the defender must make a decision whether to fight. The defender is more likely to fight when the short-term balance of forces favors it, when it is bound to the third party by alliance ties or geographic proximity, and when it has followed a firm-butflexible bargaining strategy during the crisis. Generally, these results emphasize the importance of different interests and perspectives of attackers and defenders. Even clear-sighted vision of its own interests may bring war if a state fails to tread a delicate balance between making credible threats and humiliating its adversary.

Verbal Responses to Different Bargaining Strategies: A Content Analysis of Real‐Life Buyer‐Seller Interaction

A field exerpiment was conducted in order to demonstrate a way in which social psychological research can avoid some of the shortcomings of past research on bargaining communication. Two preprogrammed male buyers negotiated a discount on the price of new cars with 48 professional salesmen. The salespersons' verbal responses to various bargaining strategies were recorded and analyzed by a content analytic scheme with the following categories: attempted antagonistic influence; attempted cooperative influence; strategic question; justification; self‐disclosure; concession refusal; “other”. Results indicated that (a) soft bargaining is reciprocated with attempted cooperative influence, whereas tough bargaining does not provoke attempted antagonistic influence; (b) stragetic questions are used as a response to both soft and tough bargaining behavior; (c) justifications are most frequent in the last phase of a sales interaction, especially when accompanying a concession refusal; (d) self‐disclosure was only present in the last phase of bargaining; (e) concessions are most frequently found in the early phase of bargaining and a concession refusal becomes increasingly frequent as bargaining proceeds; (f) most concessions are made in response to a soft‐soft bargaining strategy.

Employer Perceptions and the Market for Sandwich Students

Frequent concern has been expressed by researchers over the adequacy of organisational buyer behaviour models. Despite this, academics have for long ignored one ready test‐bed provided by their own product; namely, students. In the UK each year, several thousands of students are put on to the employment market, as either a finished product with a degree or diploma, or for a sandwich training period in work. This neglect contrasts strongly with the heavy use made of students as experimental subjects for enquiry into other difficult behavioural areas. Their use in gaming simulations of business bargaining strategy provides numerous good examples of such use.

Pay bargaining and management strategy in the National Health Service

Within the NHS the traditional Whitley system of public sector bargaining has been dramatically altered by financial constraints and the increasing influence of central government. Here the authors outline the erosion of Whitleyism in the NHS and discuss its consequences.

UAW Bargaining Strategy and Shop‐Floor Conflict: 1946–1970

UAW Bargaining Strategy and Shop‐Floor Conflict: 1946–1970

Influences on Exchange Processes: Buyers' Preconceptions of a Seller's Trustworthiness and Bargaining Toughness

Exchange theories posit that trust has an important and favorable influence on dyadic interactions. This paper examines the notion that trust plays a key role in making a seller's tough bargaining strategy successful. In a bargaining experiment, we manipulated subjects' preconceptions about a seller's trustworthiness and bargaining toughness. As hypothesized, a seller's expected trustworthiness-plus-toughness in bargaining led to higher levels of buyer-seller cooperation and agreement and a higher level of buyer concessions.

Bargaining and separation costs in two-sided markets

A two-sided market is characterized by contract negotiations, bilateral exchanges between buyers and sellers. Separation costs endow trading partners with monopoly power, rendering this a market of bilateral monopolistic competition. Market equilibrium is defined by these negotiations, a matching of the two sides, and a set of prices; the costs of disagreement are endogenous. A bargaining strategy some players use is commitment to a position. Disagreements are possible and, contrary to the case of bilateral monopoly, these disagreements are not always inefficient.

Regime-Creation by a Coalition of the Weak: Lessons from the NIEO and the Integrated Program for Commodities

Neither the New International Economic Order nor the Integrated Program for Commodities have been analyzed as examples of attempted regime-creation. The results of doing so, especially for the IPC, suggest two speculative, but plausible, conclusions. First, a coalition of the weak can affect regime-creation, provided that the coalition remains unified and develops a bargaining strategy appropriate to the context of decision. Second, regime thinking, despite its conceptual weaknesses, can have a beneficial practical effect by providing a useful, if partial, frame of reference for decision-makers. These arguments are illustrated for the Group of 77 by discussing an alternative bargaining strategy and some tactical implications in the IPC case. Some suggestions are also made about possible improvements in regime thinking itself, especially in the need to treat appropriate bargaining strategies as intervening variables between regimes and outcomes.

Reagan and the Russians: Crisis Bargaining Beliefs and the Historical Record

Reagan's view of how to deal with the Soviet Union is compared to the U. S. performance record in three Soviet-American crises: Berlin, 1948-1949, Berlin, 1961, andCuba, 1962. Reagan's public statements indicate that he views the Soviets as incorrigibly hostile, so that conflict bargaining with the Soviets is a zero-sum game requiring a coercive U.S. bargaining strategy. This is characterized as a “bullying” strategy and contrasted with a “reciprocating” approach. The two approaches provide competing hypotheses for an examination of Soviet responses to U.S. influence attempts. The study tests the association between types of U.S. influence attempts and initial Soviet reactions and then proceeds to an interrupted time series analysis of the longer effects of U. S. threats of force on the mix of coercion-accommodation in Soviet crisis bargaining. The author finds a positive association between specific U.S. threats of force and initial Soviet responses in kind, and between carrot-and-stick inducements that use less specific threats and more accommodative Soviet responses. With the exception of the Cuban crisis, U.S. threats of force have not been associated with significant extended shifts in the level of Soviet hostility. The article concludes that, on balance, the performance record of the United States is more supportive of the efficacy of a reciprocating strategy than the coercive bargaining strategy implied by Reagan's beliefs.

When Will They Ever Learn?

A set of hypotheses derived from experiential learning and a realpolitik orientation to crisis bargaining are employed to investigate the bargaining behavior of pairs of states embroiled in recurring crises. It is proposed that in crisis bargaining, experiential learning focuses on the outcome of the preceding crisis, and the lessons drawn from that experience are interpreted in accordance with a realpolitik orientation that stresses the importance of a credible demonstration of power and resolve. The hypotheses predict that in crises between states of relatively equal military capabilities, successful outcomes encourage policymakers to repeat the bargaining strategy employed in the previous crisis, while failures lead to more coercive bargaining in the next crisis. Employing events data from a sample of 18 disputes among 6 pairs of states, each pair having been engaged in three successive crises, a significant pattern of shifts to more coercive bargaining following crises with unsuccessful outcomes was found.

New strategies in union organizing

The AFL-CIO has called for new and more effective approaches in organizing. This paper reviews the classical organizing model and then identifies four strategic approaches to organizing that have been developed or re-emphasized in recent years including the corporate power strategy, the collective bargaining strategy, community acceptance and integration strategy, and the coordinated/pooled resource strategy. Factors affecting the use and success of these strategies are discussed. It is concluded that while some have promise, their limited use and mixed outcomes will probably minimize their significance in union organizing during the 1980’s.

THE EMPLOYMENT RELATION AND SPATIAL DIVISION OF LABOR: A HYPOTHESIS*

ABSTRACT The relationship between labor and capital is one of mutual antagonism and interdependence. Conflict occurs between labor and capital over control of the production process and conditions of employment. However, both classes need one another in order to produce and sustain a livelihood. Spatial decentralization of production and the division of labor can be interpreted as an explicit bargaining strategy of the firm designed to control the power of labor and reinforce the authority of capital. Firms prefer to externalize their labor markets although local conditions, skill requirements, and union power may force internalization and consequently higher costs. Small and relatively depressed local labor markets are favored locations for firms producing standardized commodities. Firms that require specific skills and technical expertise are, on the other hand, more dependent upon the locational preferences of labor. Spatial concentration and agglomeration of production involving both skilled and unskilled workers may not be in the best interests of a firm because of their different labor market strategies related to their preferred employment relations.

Challenging the Taylor Law: Prison Guards on Strike

In analyzing the 1979 strike by nearly all of the prison guards in New York State, this paper focuses on the social organization of the prison environment and the guards' changing occupational role as critical causes of the strike. Many guards believe that in recent years they have lost status and much of their authority; in addition, racial tension has mounted within the guard force as well as between guards and inmates. The authors argue that collective bargaining is not well suited to resolving those problems, and in fact the bargaining system may have aggravated them. The authors also analyze the strike's resolution, concluding that it was the state's use of National Guard troops and the application of Taylor Law sanctions, rather than any bargaining strategy by either party, that brought the guards back to work. Finally, the authors suggest that these strike penalties may have intensified the worker anger and discontent that were major causes of the strike.

A unified model for bargaining and conflict

A new model of decision making is introduced. It can be applied to two person systems, at the level of the group, as well as at the level of the organization, the society, and the supranational system. It is determinate when bargainers' information is complete, incomplete, or erroeous. The paper includes a determinate treatment of the outguessing regress, wherein each negotiator chooses his bargaining strategy (in part) based upon his expectations concerning the other's strategy, while expecting that the other chooses his strategy based upon corresponding expectations. The conditions under which negotiations break down or result in agreements which are less than Pareto optimal are also specified. The paper concludes with an application of the proposed model to manipulative bargaining, where negotiators employ manipulative tactics that alter their own or the other's expectations, utility functions, or alternatives, as well as to metabargaining, i.e., bargaining concerning which manipulative tactics will occur.

The Economics of the Television Market for Theatrical Movies

The new bargaining strategy of network bidding for feature films before their theatrical release is a logical extension of the networks' activities in the regular TV programming market.

Operantly conditioning a negotiator's concession making

This study investigated the effects of a bargaining strategy that rewards the opponent's concessions. The first of four experiments revealed that a negotiator's utilization of this reward strategy resulted in large concessions by and quick agreement with the opponent. The second experiment demonstrated that the large concessions continue after the rewards cease and the third, that two previously rewarded negotiatiors subsequently make large concessions to each other and reach quick agreements. Finally, the fourth experiment added strength to a reinforcement explanation of the results by eliminating an interpretation based upon a reciprocity effect.

Treating the symptoms of terrorism: Some principles of good hygiene

Transnational terrorism has become a pressing policy concern of national governments. Ideally, governments wish to prevent terrorist acts, but prevention may not be possible. Thus, crisis management techniques needed to limit damage are of utmost importance. The policy of “no substantive bargaining with terrorists” must be reexamined if a nation is threatened with very disruptive acts. Clearly, some threats present more perplexing problems than do others. The least difficult variety involves purely financial demands, but a much more serious problem is presented if the terrorists make demands for policy changes. If the bargaining strategy is not successful, measures must be taken to limit the potential damage and the government must seek to decouple the physical effects from potentially severe socioeconomic ramifications. This article is intended to help open a debate on the operational imperatives placed upon a government having to face acts of terrorism and does not deal with the underlying causes. While it is easy to conjure terrorist monsters, we can as easily harm ourselves by not taking reasonable preparedness measures.

Negotiator status and accountability source: A study of negotiator behavior

The nature of a negotiator's mandate (based on competence, affect, or unspecified) and of the group that was to review his performance (his own team or strangers) were manipulated to assess their impact on bargaining behavior in a laboratory experiment. Both factors had unique and joint effects on negotiator behavior. Spokesmen elected due to competence appeared to perceive more latitude in their roles, felt more free to deviate from their team's position, but took longer to reach agreement. Freedom from the constituent positions was even more pronounced when they were evaluated by strangers. In contrast, spokesmen elected because of amiability seemed to adopt a compromising bargaining strategy, were very loyal to their groups, and did not deviate. But they also took more time to reach agreement when reviewed by their own team. Both negotiated solution quality and reported satisfaction were higher when spokesmen were reviewed by their own teams regardless of their election base. In sum, the data support a model of the negotiation process that stresses the importance of the relationship between a spokesman and his constituency to the outcome of bargaining.

A Questionable Public Sector Bargaining Strategy—Anxiety Arousal

A Questionable Public Sector Bargaining Strategy—Anxiety Arousal