The effects of substantive task characteristics on negotiators' ability to reach efficient agreements
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abstract
The frequent failure of negotiators to achieve efficient agreements has been widely recognized. Research has shown that one reason for this failure is that negotiators often settle by splitting their differences on each issue, when logrolling (i.e., conceding on less important issues in exchange for reciprocal concessions on more important issues) is required to reach efficient agreements. Two studies were conducted to determine whether substantive task characteristics (i.e., different cover stories) would influence the types of agreements that negotiators reached, and, thus, the likelihood that they would achieve an efficient settlement. The first study found that for tasks with identical formal characteristics (i.e., identical payoff tables), negotiators were more likely to logroll, and therefore to reach efficient settlements, for certain substantive task characteristics than for others. The second study demonstrated that the influence of substantive task characteristics on concession patterns begins even before inception of face-to-face negotiations. After simply reading the instructional materials, participants indicated that one substantive version of the negotiation problem was comparatively more likely to be settled by logrolling than was the other version of the problem, even though both had identical payoff structures. The results supported the assumption that negotiation problems typically provide cues to negotiators about what type of strategy is likely to lead to mutually acceptable settlements. We conclude that it may be useful to postulate a hierarchy of negotiating behaviors. The specific behaviors elicited from the hierarchy will be a function of task characteristics and context, as well as the dynamics of the negotiation process itself.
