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Integrative Bargaining – Pruitt

1. General Characteristics of Integrative Agreements


Yield High Joint Benefits – both sides achieve or exceed their levels of aspiration – how do we treat a compromise? “A lazy person’s integrative agreement”. Integrative bargainers don’t believe in compromise. Pruitt believes that sometimes the best integrative solution is a compromise, but if there are multiple issues on the table, a compromise is a minimum of what can be achieved.
Non-obvious – Prominent or salient (obvious) solutions are rarely integrative solutions. One of the biggest impediments, the most obvious solution, is a compromise.


2. Specific types of integrative agreements

a. Cost cutting – Make an offer that reduces the cost to the opponent’s image, or reduces face costs. Two concerns when negotiation –1. Precedent setting - an agreement with you sets precedent for other agreements. Ways around this – a. negotiate in private – students who want to take Roloff’s class should visit him in his office rather than appear in class and rush him with an add slip. He offers deals that are good for 31 minutes, and if the person tells roommate he/she also tries to contact Roloff the same way, both will be refused. b. Negotiate up front that this deal does not create a precedent – Roloff suggests it doesn’t work – one year teaching contracts offered because a tenured prof left leaving not enough time to hire another prof on the tenure track, they think they are entitled to the job after the one year is up. “When a precedent becomes the norm, you are screwed.” 2. Fear of appearing weak – student caught Roloff on a bad day, two weeks into the term, the student was honest, and said that she needed a C-level class to graduate. Roloff confronted her with the fact that she just needed a class and didn’t care which one, so she asked whether she could start again. She came back and said that her degree would be diminished if she didn’t take his very special class (honesty was not the best policy). Students who ask for an extension on a midterm either make their circumstances seem so bad that he doesn’t lose face granting an extension, or they grovel, say how tough Roloff is reputed to be, and builds face for Roloff. Or, they say how sensitive and understanding he is, attribute their compliance to a pro-social motive. Make the other party believe the solution is their idea, Roloff story in which a student took Roloff’s examples and used them on his paper, Roloff gave him those examples because R wanted to help him quickly. Sanctioned Forums – a person makes a request, and a group decides whether to grant. Putting decision-making in the hands of a group makes individual face issues disappear.
b. Logrolling – Pruitt is best known for this. Multiple issues with different priorities are on the table; make concessions on low priority issues while standing firm on the high priority issues. A trade-off strategy. Source of the term is from politics, democracy works because of logrolling, divergent groups are willing to give concessions that are meaningless to them as long as they get a high priority item in return. In Springfield, they don’t care about what happens in Chicago, and vice versa. This is a controversial technique, esp. in politics this is considered unethical.
c. Non-specific Compensation – After a negotiation starts, you add a new reward to the mix, something else that adds value. In logrolling, all issues are on the table; in non-specific compensation, priorities are shared with opponent, so a new reward is added to enable trade-offs. A way to create trade-offs when none are otherwise available. Downsides: 1. Must create something of actual value to the other side. Money must be exchanged for a greater measure of a non-money item, like service. 2. It looks like a bribe, can cheapen the negotiation, sweeteners can look superficial or cheap, or appear unethical because they are not within the parameters of the deal, e.g. Cubs tickets to close a pharma deal.
d. Bridging – Non-conventional, anti-prominence, transform the situation by acting in ways that you haven’t before. Study done a U of Michigan, gave midterm then took 50 points away from every score, so all failed. He made the class negotiate against each other to get points back. 10 rounds of Creative alternative game – P and O. P can choose C or D, O can choose A and B. A and C, both get 4 points, C and B, P gets 4, O gets 0. A and D P gets –8, O gets 4, D and B, P gets 20, O gets –2. (ex) Prominent solution is that each gets 4. Solution is that D B and the 20 points are split, 11 to 9. Over 10 rounds points are more than made up for, 90 points exceeds that 50-point loss. When will people negotiate? Face to face worked, passing notes did not. Personality was a factor; people who are dogmatic would not negotiate, two high-dogmatic people would not negotiate, were not creative, a high/low the low found the solution and convinced them. Two lows will find it together. For Bridging to work, preconceptions of how the game is played must be abandoned. Dogmatic people will blindly follow precedent.
e. Unlinking Agreements – like nonspecific compensation in reverse – removing issues upon which parties can’t agree from the negotiation. 1. Fractionation – breaks a complex issue into parts and deal with the parts separately. Doesn’t work after negotiation has already begun. When filling a role in Comm, people wanted to add to that area but didn’t like the person proposed to fill it; since a link was already created, the position couldn’t be looked at in a vacuum without the person proposed. A strong negative component will defeat fractionation. Removing parties who care about the decision is a way to fractionate – risky shift research in Roloff’s undergrad, he was put into a group with a high-risk taker in hopes that a group would take risk individuals wouldn’t. Vote was 4-1 for 60% success of marriage before recommending marriage. Roloff made a motion that the risk taker couldn’t vote, and the decision was unanimous. Roloff proposed changing the meaning of unanimity. Research made them consider the other, they voted to recommend marriage when chances were 1 in 10.High-risk taker was only influential when he couldn’t be ignored. Roloff controlled the schedule when a difficult prof was on a committee, they met when the difficult prof was unavailable. 2. Precedent setting – the way it has been done makes unlinking possible 3. Agree to disagree – leave the issue unsettled, doesn’t work if the issue must be settled.
f. Reopener Agreements – risk and uncertainty, possible negative outcomes, one party holds out because of fear. Put a time limit on the arrangement, make a temporary arrangement. An MSC student was asked to sign a prenuptial agreement. She objected, he pushed her to get an attorney so the agreement would hold up in court. Her attorney told her not to sign it. Since the wedding was already arranged, they stopped talking about it. Day of the wedding, the attorney appeared and said she should sign or the wedding would be called off, the groom was elsewhere. Her attorney appeared, his attorney said that he’d been taken to the cleaners in a prior 2-month marriage, and didn’t want to repeat that. Her attorney said that a codicil, the prenup was only good for the first year of marriage, then they would renegotiate. They’d been married for 7 years at the time she wrote the paper (the couple didn’t renegotiate after a year). When MSC was started, the School of Speech had to grant faculty for the program. One of the artsy types suggested that the MSC was a military industrial complex sellout. One prof suggested a reopener with a 5-year time limit. After 5 years, the issue was never revisited. Pruitt says that the downside to the reopening agreement is that it could undercut the agreement, if there is a chance the agreement will be cancelled; the party may under invest to cut its losses. If marriages were renegotiable periodically, it would discourage people from kids, buying real estate, things that come with commitment. At first, the Constitution was to be renegotiated every 19 years, would have had bad results.
g. Contingency Contracts – Became popular in sports negotiations, late-career athletes’ contracts were given a base plus performance incentives.






Conditions:

1. Simultaneous consideration – consideration of issues – package offer
2. Search Model – “Reasonably High” goals - no prominent solution, challenges one to exert effort, low goals and unreasonably high goals discourage effort. A. Set reasonably high goals B. Find ways the opponent can help you meet your goals C. If opponent rejects offer, readjust the ways the opponent can help you meet your goals. Roloff was upset at NU, applied at Wisconsin, they wanted him and were willing to negotiate for as long as possible. R set a family income goal, set it reasonably high because raises once hired are hard to come by. Thought of all that U of W could give a prof 1. Salary 2. Summer Support (a summer school class or a grant) 3. Research Support (travel, journal and book money) 4. Tuition support for daughters. 5. Discretionary fund. 90% comes from salary. U of W said they couldn’t afford to pay that, because at U of W a committee of faculty vote on what everone else should make, so he’d never see a raise, and other faculty would know that his salary came from their potential raises. Pruitt says that Roloff should have reduced the amount that came from salary (90%) and shifted it to another category. Patents feed a slush fund, which is distributed to other faculty. U of W still couldn’t meet his needs. They came up with a possible deal-closer; they offered Roloff’s wife a job! They log rolled in reverse, and asked Roloff to adjust his salary because Karen would be working at U of W. Karen went to Madison, and favored a move. It almost worked, NU countered, Karen really didn’t want to move from Chicago. Don’t lower goals, just adjust paths, unless the other party proves that you can’t get what you want.
3. Strategies - Information exchange – two types 1. Goals 2. Priorities to get to goal. According to Pruitt, it is more important to negotiate priorities than goals, you can settle without knowing goals. Pressure strategies – the more argumentative or coercive you are, the less likely an integrative agreement will be reached. One exception, if you are argumentative about the workability or advantages of the offer. At U of W, they gave Roloff a practical disadvantage to paying him, the political fallout when salaries are reviewed by other faculty. They didn’t question Roloff’s value, they offered a better way to achieve the family income goal. Bargaining strategies – 3 types 1. Sequential approach – least effective. All items on the table, settle each item in sequence. Very inefficient way to do integrative bargaining, if a priority item is not settled, the negotiation can fail. Log rolling is much more effective. One-sided log rolling, you make concessions on your low priority items, the other party will do the same naturally, disadvantage is the time it takes.

Pruitt’s general principle –Flexible Rigidity – To be an effective integrative bargainer be rigid as to goals, but flexible as to the means to achieve them. The two most pressing considerations: 1. Being rigidly rigid – looks like tough bargaining 2. Flexibly flexible – too easy, soft, insufficiently stubborn.

The dual concern model, be highly concerned for other party but sufficiently demanding on ones own behalf. Anticipated future interaction will raise concern for the other party, but may give too much. If they were accountable to a constituency but also had a future with the other party, this created a balance.