Negotiation Outcomes Research Articles

Afghanistan after the U.S. Withdrawal: Trends and Scenarios for the Future

executive summary: This essay discusses the prospects for Afghanistan after the completion of the U.S. forces withdrawal and assesses that a relatively wide range of outcomes remain possible. main argument Neither the Taliban's leadership nor any of their regional sponsors aim for the re-establishment of a Taliban autocracy. However, the deadlock in intra-Afghan talks raises the possibility of that happening by default, especially if the Taliban gain such a military edge that a balanced negotiated outcome becomes impossible. A Taliban military campaign could increasingly weaken the Taliban's willingness to make concessions, whether to the government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan or to individual factions of the political elite in Kabul. In that scenario, two outcomes are possible: a de facto Taliban autocracy, in which fragments of the old political elite could be co-opted in a marginal, window-dressing role; or state collapse, in which the Taliban would not be able to assert order over the chaos created by the defeat of the republic. policy implications • Unblocking the intra-Afghan talks will be a top priority for Kabul's elite officials, and arguably, if to a lesser extent, for the Biden administration too. While political (and possibly physical) survival is at stake for Kabul's elite, the problem for the Biden administration is one of ending U.S. intervention with a somewhat positive outcome. • Direct and unofficial talks between Taliban and elements of Kabul's political elite, bypassing the Ghani administration, are likely to increase in intensity and seriousness, even if the distance between most of the political factions and the Taliban remains wide. • At the same time, there is also likely to be an intensification of scheming to unseat Ghani and replace him with an interim government that is deemed to be more acceptable to the Taliban and better able to prevent the deterioration of the government's hold on the country. • Regional powers, already skeptical of the staying power of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, are likely to view both growing Taliban strength and the bickering among political factions in Kabul as additional reasons to distance themselves from the internationally recognized Afghan government and throw their weight behind either the Taliban or a political solution that circumvents the Ghani administration.

Co-Management of Protected Areas: A Governance System Analysis of Vatnajökull National Park, Iceland

Land allocated to protected areas (PA) is expanding as are expectations about the services these areas deliver. There is a need to advance knowledge on PA governance systems, like co-management, recognising that there is no “one-size-fits-all” solution. We analyse the co-management governance system and performance of Vatnajökull National Park (VNP), Iceland. We adapt an analytical framework from the literature on environmental governance and analyse its governance system, hence actor roles, institutional arrangements and interactions. Our findings illustrate that the co-management structure was an outcome of political negotiations and a response to the lack of legitimacy of its predecessors; resulting in a tailor-made governance system set out in park-specific legislation. Although the performance is quite positive, being adaptive to changes, inclusive, promoting rural development and an appreciated facilitator of devolution and power-sharing, it has come with challenges. It has encountered problems delineating responsibilities among its actors, causing conflict and confusion; in settling conflicting localised issues close to local stakeholders, there have been capacity issues. We argue that the VNP co-management system is fit for its purpose, aligned with Icelandic land-use governance structures but in need of systematic improvements. There are important lessons as Iceland seeks to expand its PA estate and beyond, since the global community is setting ambitious policy goals to expand site-based conservation.

Prosumer Community Portfolio Optimization via Aggregator: The Case of the Iberian Electricity Market and Portuguese Retail Market

The participation of household prosumers in wholesale electricity markets is very limited, considering the minimum participation limit imposed by most market participation rules. The generation capacity of households has been increasing since the installation of distributed generation from renewable sources in their facilities brings advantages for themselves and the system. Due to the growth of self-consumption, network operators have been putting aside the purchase of electricity from households, and there has been a reduction in the price of these transactions. This paper proposes an innovative model that uses the aggregation of households to reach the minimum limits of electricity volume needed to participate in the wholesale market. In this way, the Aggregator represents the community of households in market sales and purchases. An electricity transactions portfolio optimization model is proposed to enable the Aggregator reaching the decisions on which markets to participate to maximize the market negotiation outcomes, considering the day-ahead market, intra-day market, and retail market. A case study is presented, considering the Iberian wholesale electricity market and the Portuguese retail market. A community of 50 prosumers equipped with photovoltaic generators and individual storage systems is used to carry out the experiments. A cost reduction of 6–11% is achieved when the community of households buys and sells electricity in the wholesale market through the Aggregator.

PNS64 Canadian Pricing and Reimbursement: Understanding the Biggest Hurdles in the Payer Landscape

The Canadian national Health Technology Assessment (HTA) is the Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health (CADTH) which evaluates the clinical and economic benefits of new therapies to make public reimbursement recommendations (except Quebec). In addition, the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board (PMPRB) has, since 1980, set a national ceiling price for new therapies based on their assessment of their relative therapeutic benefit, their international price and/or domestic therapeutic class price. In 2010, provincial governments established the pan-Canadian Pharmaceutical Alliance (pCPA) to collectively negotiate rebates off the list price for public plans. This research aims to evaluate which of these steps (PMPRB/CADTH/pCPA) is the most challenging for new therapies to overcome. All publicly-available CADTH, PMPRB and pCPA patented drug reports were identified and key data extracted (to 04-JAN-2020). 751 PMPRB outcomes were identified (from 01-JAN-2010), 85% were “within guidance”, 6.8% “does not trigger an investigation”, 2.8% “subject to investigation”, and only 4.8% subject to a “VCU” (Voluntary Compliance Undertaking). 379 completed CADTH appraisals were identified (from 01-JAN-2010), 3% were recommended with no restriction/conditions, 69% recommended with restrictions/conditions, and 28% not recommended. 526 pCPA negotiation outcomes were identified, 65% were concluded with agreement, 10% were concluded without agreement, in 15% negotiations were not pursued, and 10% were ongoing/under consideration. Currently, the substantial hurdles to clear for new therapies in Canada are the CADTH assessment and the pCPA negotiations based upon this assessment. To date, the PMPRB has rarely (<5% cases) issued VCUs to regulate drug prices. However, significant PMPRB reforms are due to be implemented from 01-JUL-2021, including changing the reference basket of countries and allowing their consideration of economic impact, which will significantly increase the number of drugs and magnitude of effect on drug prices.

Wronged translators in U.S.-Japan politics

ABSTRACT This paper examines how in a political context translators/interpreters can be wronged, i.e. unfairly inculpated, due to complex and subtle power relations, and how in the name of “mistranslation” they can be blamed for the negative outcomes of international negotiations. Even where the accuracy or quality of the translation may be at issue, there is still no escaping the behind-the-scenes political maneuvering that paradoxically makes the translation a secondary issue. Three instances of translation beguilement in the context of U.S.-Japan negotiations demonstrate how public officials can use translation as an excuse to provide a more palatable national narrative. Scholars and non-scholars alike have discussed these cases frequently and extensively over the past decades. Contrary to the most common explanations, this paper reveals alternative interpretations of those three famous cases labeled as “translation errors.”

Negotiating Peace and Faith Jesuit Mediators in the Inter-Polity Relations between Christians and Muslims in the 17th-Century Philippines

In the overlay of Muslim and Christian geopolitical interest zones in the early modern Philippines, the missionaries of the Society of Jesus got to play a unique role as cultural intermediaries. This article analyzes some outstanding episodes of Jesuit diplomatic activities between the Spanish colonial government and the rulers on the islands of Mindanao and Jolo. In the setting of the Southeast Asian world, Spain found itself in a hostile environment in which the Muslim polities were a permanent factor. Slave raiders from both islands threatened the coastal villages of the Spanish Visayas, while on the other hand, Spanish imperial plans compromised the sovereignty of the sultans. By investigating Jesuit chronicles and additional contemporary sources, this study focuses on the Spanish side of this relation. It will contextualize the role of the Jesuits as ambassadors and, at the same time, as promoters of their own missionary interests. Thereby, it will assess the geostrategic considerations of the Jesuit order and their similarities with and differences from those of the colonial government in Manila. This article argues that in spite of a general overlap of interests, discrepancies existed and increased over the years, eventually effecting the outcome of negotiations.

Managing expert/novice identity with actions in conversation: Identity construction & negotiation

Interactants as social members possess many an identity in their social life, but identities should not be assumed as priori to an interaction, instead, they should be understood as being constructed by interactants with social actions in talk-in-interaction or as the outcome of participants' orientation and negotiation. Taking epistemics and deontics into consideration offers us a pathway to probe into interactants' identity construction by analysing the social actions that they accomplish in and through their turns-at-talk. As a single case study of a telephone call between two acquaintances, the present research reveals the moment-by-moment emergence of the identity of expert and that of novice. Specifically, the novice's requesting for information, explicit advice seeking, and troubles telling are unanimously responded to by the expert with solicited and unsolicited advice giving, though the expert also offers solution, makes assessment and so on in this telephone call. This division instantiates the asymmetrical possession of knowledge, displays different deontic authority, and constructs contrasting identities. Furthermore, the (in)congruence between identity status and stance is also investigated to reveal how identity is constructed, negotiated and even rebutted in talk-in-interaction and to reveal the interactants' calibration of the relationship between identity status and identity stance.

The pacification of Brazil's urban margins: peripheral urbanisation and dynamic order-making

ABSTRACT This article explores the relationship between informal processes of urbanisation and order-making at Brazil's urban margins. It draws on research conducted in contrasting neighbourhoods in the peripheries of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, analysing the influence of different kinds of criminal organisation on these areas. It is argued that the unpredictable processes surrounding peripheral urbanisation – the irregular occupation or subdivision of land, the growth of diverse markets, physical consolidation and, in some cases, eventual formalisation – provide a dynamic backdrop against which local order and disorder are produced. To theorise these interrelated processes, I mobilise the concept of ‘pacification’. This is usually used to refer to violent state interventions against socially and racially marginalised populations that are followed by measures designed to create more lasting stability. However, I argue that, while it may ultimately have such effects, pacification should be understood as a provisional outcome of ongoing negotiations between state and criminal actors rather than as a coherent, top-down project.

Diversity and Humanitarian Negotiation

The humanitarian sector has steadily pushed forward with efforts to cultivate negotiation capacity among aid workers. However, considerations of how the profile of the humanitarian negotiator might shape negotiation outcomes have been, at best, in the background of ongoing professional discussions or, at worst, entirely overlooked. This working paper aims to fill this gap. Based on semi-structured interviews and survey data, this working paper assesses the role of identity characteristics in humanitarian negotiation processes. As the interview and survey results suggest, a negotiator’s profile—including identity characteristics and past professional experiences—can shape counterparts’ perceptions of humanitarian negotiators; fuel humanitarians’ own biases and stereotypes of their interlocutors; and feed into challenging internal organisational dynamics, as humanitarian organisations seek to promote diversity and foster inclusion and belonging among staff.

The Consolidation Of ‘Traditional Villages’ In Pikine, Senegal: Negotiating Legitimacy, Control and Access to Peri-Urban Land

ABSTRACT This article examines the actors, everyday practices and norms involved in the production of peri-urban land in the prolongation of ‘traditional villages’ in Pikine, Senegal. It refers to the conception of governance in African cities as the outcome of daily transactions and negotiations between various institutions and inhabitants, and of adaptations to changing socio-economic and political conditions. Using the case of two recent neighbourhoods located on the urban periphery, the article documents planning processes in which traditional authorities and local institutions collaborate to craft new land subdivision and regulation practices in order to develop and control the territory. It argues that traditional authorities need to create new alliances with municipal actors and share the benefits of land allocation. However, traditional authorities manage to sustain their influence and governance capacity through the possible negotiation and exception of the application of regulation practices. The article contributes to studies on urban governance in Africa on two fronts. First, it challenges normative assumptions about the absence or weakness of planning practices and regulatory power pertaining to peri-urban areas. Second, by shining light on the particular logic of land allocation, claims and authority, the article deepens our understanding of neo-customary land delivery systems, and their spatial and social consequences.

The Impact of the Negotiators’ Personality and Socio-Demographic Factors on Their Perception of Unethical Negotiation Tactics

ABSTRACT Purpose; The study aims to examine the impact of a negotiator’s profile (personality, gender, age and experience) on his perception of unethical negotiation tactics. Design/methodology/approach; A survey has been conducted among 220 middle manager employees and chief executive officers (CEOs) who are directly involved in the negotiation processes and activities for their organizations. A component factor analysis (CFA) was first performed. Then, a multiple regression analysis and ANOVA analysis were conducted to test the study hypotheses. Findings; The study suggests that negotiators with a high level of ‘openness to experience’ perceive the use of ‘traditional competitive bargaining’ and ‘inappropriate information gathering’ as ethical. However, ‘conscientious’ negotiators perceive the use of ‘misrepresentation of information’ and ‘inappropriate information gathering’ as unethical. In addition, negotiators with a high level of ‘agreeableness’ perceive the use of ‘misrepresentation of information’ as inappropriate. ‘Misrepresentation of information’ was perceived as more inappropriate for women than for men. Finally, older and highly experienced negotiators perceive ‘inappropriate information gathering’ as unethical more than younger and less experienced ones. Research limitations/implications; The study measures perceptions rather than actual behavior. Practical implications; The study findings could help firms to identify the more suitable profiles in terms of socio-demographic variables and also personality traits for positions related to negotiation with their stakeholders, especially for those with more long-term orientations. Social implications; Recognizing the potential of businesses to provide an important contribution to society and the large influence of business ethics in people’s everyday lives, including business managers’, trigger a better grasp of the factors that help alleviate unethical practices and that nurture a business culture embedded in an increasing demand for business ethics worldwide. Negotiators are not the exception. Hence, identifying which personality traits are likely to predispose negotiators to endorse unethical negotiation tactics may help shape training programs suitable to produce favorable inclinations to comply with ethical negotiations’ principles. This seems to be possible, on the face of the recent findings suggesting the likelihood of personality traits changes, following the implementation of some particular actions. Originality/value; To the best of our knowledge, this study is among the few that examine the impact of the negotiator’s personality traits and his socio-demographic variables on his perception of the appropriateness of negotiation tactics. This study is in line with calls to reconsider the role that personality plays in negotiation processes, ethical/unethical behavior and outcomes, after a long period of skepticism among scholars as to its significant impact.

Conflict Talk in Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story: An Interdisciplinary Study of the Challenging Negotiations of Divorce

Abstract Conflict talk is the talk that accompanies conflicts. It is the outcome of negotiations of disagreement in confrontational interaction. This research paper deals with conflict talk in Noah Baumbach's Marriage Story. It offers an interdisciplinary study of the challenging negotiations of divorce in the data for analysis. The study is interdisciplinary as it derives from conversation analysis, discourse analysis, and pragmatics. It suggests for the analysis of data a theoretical framework inspired by Jef Verschueren's Linguistic Adaptation Theory. It proposes that language use is a dynamic process of linguistic choice (1999). The framework has two facets: structural and strategic. The research paper claims that a conflict is a communicative context of adaptability where people make language selections that generate this talk. The paper attempts to figure out the causes of conflict talk and show how people adapt their behavior to conform structurally and strategically to the conflicting context at hand. The paper concludes that dynamic negotiations between disputing language users during conflict talk can reach positive ends, e.g., resolutions and agreements, if they adapt their language choice towards convergent rather than divergent processes of interaction. Key Words: Conflict talk; Linguistic Adaptation Theory; structural phases of negotiation in conflict talk; linguistic strategies of conflict talk; Marriage Story. مستخلص: حديث النزاع هو الحديث الذي يصاحب النزاعات. فهو نتاج لمفاوضات الخلاف في التفاعل التصادمي. تهتم هذه الورقة البحثية بحديث النزاع في زواج لنوح بومباک والتي تتناولها کبيانات للتحليل حيث تقدم دراسة بين التخصصات لمفاوضات التحدي أثناء الطلاق. والدراسة بين التخصصات لکونها مشتقه من تحليل المحادثة، وتحليل الخطاب، والتداولية. ولتحليل البيانات، تقترح هذه الورقة البحثية اطارا نظريا مستلهم من نظريه التکيف اللغوي لجيف فيرشورن. فتفترض النظرية أن استخدام اللغة هو عمليه ديناميکية من الاختيار اللغوي (1999). الاطار النظري له شقين: بنائي، واستراتيجي. وتقترح هذه الورقة البحثية أن النزاع هو سياق تواصلي من التکيف حيث يقوم فيه الناس باختيارات لغويه تولد هذا النوع من الحديث. تحاول الورقة أن تکتشف أسباب النزاع وتوضح کيف تستطيع الناس أن تکيف تصرفاتها بنائيا واستراتيجيا مع سياق النزاع في الکلام. وتخلص الورقة الى أن النزاعات الديناميکية بين مستخدمي اللغة المتنازعين أثناء حديث النزاع ممکن أن تصل الى نهايات ايجابيه کالتصالحات والموافقات اذا کيفوا اختيارهم اللغوي تجاه عمليات التفاعل القائمه على التقارب و ليس التباعد. کلمات مفتاحيه: حديث النزاع- نظريه التکيف اللغوي- المراحل البنائية للمفاوضة في حديث النزاع- الاستراتيجيات اللغوية في حديث النزاع- قصه زواج.

Bargaining power as moderator of the “delay costs effect” in supply chain negotiations

This paper explores the extent to which bargaining power asymmetries among supply chain members moderate the effect that the delay costs of the setting exert on negotiation outcomes. First, we propose that the influence of delay costs on the initial gap between the bargaining demands of sellers and buyers (i.e., initial bargaining gap) decreases when buyers have a bargaining power advantage over sellers. Second, we posit that this moderation effect reduces the indirect effect that the delay costs have on negotiation outcomes (via the initial bargaining gap). To test these notions, we conduct a 2 × 2 between-subjects experiment with undergraduate students from a large European university in which we manipulate the relative bargaining power and delay costs of the setting. We conduct our analysis with 292 observations. Our findings support our theoretical predictions. Specifically, results indicate that bargaining power moderates (i.e., reduces) the effect of the delay costs on negotiation processes by reducing their influence on the initial bargaining gap. Likewise, our analysis shows that because more powerful buyers are less likely to modify their behavior as a result of the delay costs, they face a higher risk of obtaining suboptimal bargaining profits.

A New Method for Peer Matching and Negotiation of Prosumers in Peer-to-Peer Energy Markets

This article presents a scalable mechanism for peer-to-peer (P2P) energy trading among prosumers in a smart grid. In the proposed mechanism, prosumers engage in a non-mediated negotiation with their peers to reach an agreement on the price and quantity of energy to be exchanged. Instead of concurrent bilateral negotiation between all peers with high overheads, an iterative peer matching process is employed to match peers for bilateral negotiation. The proposed negotiation algorithm enables prosumers to come to an agreement, given that they have no prior knowledge about the preference structure of their trading partners. A greediness factor is introduced to model the selfish behavior of prosumers in the negotiation process and to investigate its impact on the negotiation outcome. In order to recover the costs related to power losses, a transaction fee is applied to each transaction that enables the grid operator to recover incurred losses due to P2P trades. The case studies demonstrate that the proposed mechanism discourages greedy behavior of prosumers in the negotiation process as it does not increase their economic surplus. Also, it has an appropriate performance from the computation overheads and scalability perspectives.

Tactical anger in negotiation: The expresser's perspective

AbstractPresenting programmed angry messages to a negotiator has increased concession rates in a series of recent experiments. But observing responses to a computer or confederate counterpart cannot yield insight into the perceptions, reactions, and negotiation outcomes experienced by those who actually deploy anger as a tactic. We report five studies examining the anger expression decision using a range of different methods. In the fully interactive two‐person integrative negotiation in Study 1, expressed anger generally degraded trust while damaging implementation of deals. That ultimately diminished value actually claimed by anger expressers. In the discrete choice experiment of Study 2, sending angry messages proved costly for expressers, who registered very high levels of measured disutility from using this tactic. In Study 3, survey respondents reported widespread unwillingness to misrepresent anger during negotiation. Recalling a past negotiation, anger correlated negatively with experienced success, indicating that disutility from expressing anger generalizes widely across different contexts. Study 4 revealed that negotiators generally consider the tactic to be unethical. More than just specific beliefs about the lack of efficacy, Study 5 revealed that the source of tactical disutility lies in generalized discomfort with the misrepresentation of anger. Implications for research, practice, and training are considered.

Negotiation beliefs: Comparing Americans and the Chinese

We address the micro foundations of international business research by examining negotiation beliefs as a parsimonious guide for international business negotiators. We conceptualise the construct of ‘negotiation beliefs’ as a negotiator’s cognition about the nature of negotiation and effective negotiation strategies. We integrate the negotiation literature and empirically investigate the differences and similarities in the negotiation beliefs of Americans and the Chinese. Across two studies, we conduct a conceptual analysis of negotiation beliefs and develop measures for the culturally similar and culturally different factors of the negotiation beliefs of Chinese and American negotiators. We find that negotiation beliefs can predict negotiation outcomes. Our findings indicate that Americans and the Chinese share negotiation beliefs about cooperation and competition. They also understand negotiation using culturally different factors, namely hierarchy and relationship for the Chinese and economic interest and confrontation for the Americans. We further discuss the theoretical and practical implications for international negotiations, particularly regarding disputes between the US and China.

Concessions for Concession’s Sake: Injustice, Indignation, and the Construction of Intractable Conflict in Israel–Palestine

In intractable conflicts, what factors lead populations to accept negotiated outcomes? To examine these issues, we conduct a survey experiment on a representative sample of the Jewish Israeli population and a companion experiment on a representative sample of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. We find that holding the negotiated settlement outcome constant, approval of the settlement is strongly influenced by whether it is framed as a negotiating defeat for one side—if and only if respondents are primed to be indignant—and that these effects are strongly mediated by perceptions of the fairness of the settlement outcome. Moral indignation produces a desire for concessions for concession’s sake. Such conflicts over political framing violate assumptions of the rationalist literature on conflict processes and suggest important new directions for conflict theorizing.

The Influence of Weight Bias on Processes and Outcomes in Negotiation.

In two studies, using a mix of samples, we examined the influence of weight bias on behaviors in competitive, potentially high stakes situations. As predicted, weight bias directed focal actors' treatment of counterparts in a negotiation. Negotiators made lower value offers to overweight counterparts relative to average-weight counterparts. In addition, overweight counterparts also received more negative messages over the course of their negotiation and were evaluated less favorably after the negotiation than average-weight counterparts.

Assessing social preferences in reimbursement negotiations for new Pharmaceuticals in Oncology: an experimental design to analyse willingness to pay and willingness to accept

BackgroundPrice negotiations for specialty pharmaceuticals take place in a complex market setting. The determination of the added value of new treatments and the related societal willingness to pay are of increasing importance in policy reform debates. From a behavioural economics perspective, potential cognitive biases and other-regarding concerns affecting outcomes of reimbursement negotiations are of interest. An experimental setting to investigate social preferences in reimbursement negotiations for novel, oncology pharmaceuticals was used. Of interest were differences in social preferences caused by incremental changes of the patient outcome.MethodsAn online experiment was conducted in two separate runs (n = 202, n = 404) on the Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) platform. Populations were split into two (run one) and four (run two) equally sized treatment groups for hypothetical reimbursement decisions. Participants were randomly assigned to the role of a public price regulator for pharmaceuticals (buyer) or a representative of a pharmaceutical company (seller). In run two, role groups were further split into two different price magnitude framings (“real world” vs unconverted “real payoff” prices). Decisions had real monetary effects on other participants (in the role of premium payers or investors) and via charitable donations to a patient organisation (patient benefit).Results56 (run one) and 59 (run two) percent of participants stated strictly monotone preferences for incremental patient benefit. The mean incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) against standard of care (SoC) was higher than the initial ICER of the SoC against no care. Regulators stated lower reservation prices in the “real world” prices group compared to their colleagues in the unconverted payoff group. No price group showed any reluctance to trade. Overall, regulators rated the relevance of the patient for their decision higher and the relevance of their own role lower compared to sellers.ConclusionsThe price magnitude of current oncology treatments affects stated preferences for incremental survival, and assigned responsibilities lead to different opinions on the relevance of affected stakeholders. The design is useful to further assess effects of reimbursement negotiations on societal outcomes like affordability (cost) or availability (access) of new pharmaceuticals and test behavioural policy interventions.

How do international bureaucrats affect policy outputs? Studying administrative influence strategies in international organizations

The article investigates how international public administrations, as corporate actors, influence policymaking within international organizations. Starting from a conception of international organizations as political-administrative systems, we theorize the strategies international bureaucrats may use to affect international organizations’ policies and the conditions under which these strategies vary. Building on a most-likely case design, we use process tracing to study two cases of bureaucratic influence: the influence of the secretariat of the World Health Organization on the “Global action plan for the prevention and control of noncommunicable diseases”; and the influence of the International Labour Office on the “Resolution concerning decent work in global supply chains”. We use interview material gathered from international public administration staff and stakeholders to illustrate varying influence strategies and the conditions under which these strategies are used. The study shows how and when international public administrations exert policy influence, and offers new opportunities to extend the generalizability of public administration theories. Points for practitioners International bureaucrats influence the outcomes of multilateral negotiations by means of their technical expertise and strategic involvement in the decision-making process. Their influence is primarily geared toward achieving organizational goals. However, the perception of too much influence can threaten the implementation of a decision. Political leadership needs to find the right balance between encouraging entrepreneurial behavior and providing sufficient political steering. Civil servants themselves need a well-functioning political radar to sense how far they can push with their ambitions.