THE INFORMATION DILEMMA IN NEGOTIATIONS: EFFECTS OF EXPERIENCE, INCENTIVES, AND INTEGRATIVE POTENTIAL

J. Keith Murnighan; Linda Babcock; Leigh Thompson; Madan Pillutla

doi:10.1108/eb022828

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International Journal of Conflict Management

ISSN: 1044-4068

Online from: 1990

Subject Area: Management Science/Management Studies

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THE INFORMATION DILEMMA IN NEGOTIATIONS: EFFECTS OF EXPERIENCE, INCENTIVES, AND INTEGRATIVE POTENTIAL

Document Information:
Title:	THE INFORMATION DILEMMA IN NEGOTIATIONS: EFFECTS OF EXPERIENCE, INCENTIVES, AND INTEGRATIVE POTENTIAL
Author(s):	J. Keith Murnighan, (Northwestern University), Linda Babcock, (Carnegie Mellon University), Leigh Thompson, (Northwestern University), Madan Pillutla, (London Business School)
Citation:	J. Keith Murnighan, Linda Babcock, Leigh Thompson, Madan Pillutla, (1999) "THE INFORMATION DILEMMA IN NEGOTIATIONS: EFFECTS OF EXPERIENCE, INCENTIVES, AND INTEGRATIVE POTENTIAL", International Journal of Conflict Management, Vol. 10 Iss: 4, pp.313 - 339
Article type:	General review
DOI:	10.1108/eb022828 (Permanent URL)
Publisher:	MCB UP Ltd
Abstract:	This paper investigates the information dilemma in negotiations: if negotiators reveal information about their priorities and preferences, more efficient agreements may be reached but the shared information may be used strategically by the other negotiator, to the revealers' disadvantage. We present a theoretical model that focuses on the characteristics of the negotiators, the structure of the negotiation, and the available incentives; it predicts that experienced negotiators will out-perform naive negotiators on distributive (competitive) tasks, especially when they have information about their counterpart's preferences and the incentives are high—unless the task is primarily integrative, in which case information will contribute to the negotiators maximizing joint gain. Two experiments (one small, one large) showed that the revelation of one's preferences was costly and that experienced negotialors outperformed their naive counterparts by a wide margin, particularly when the task and issues were distributive and incentives were large. Our results help to identify the underlying dynamics of the information dilemma and lead to a discussion of the connections between information and social dilemmas and the potential for avoiding inefficiencies.

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