Charles B. Craver

Restoring the promise of American labor law

The product of an October 1993 conference on labor law reform jointly sponsored by the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell U. and the Department of Economic Research at the AFL-CIO, this volume both argues the need for fundamental reform of the legal and institutional underpinnings o

Gender and Negotiation Performance

When males and females negotiate with persons of the opposite sex - and people of the same sex - gender-based stereotypes may influence their interactions. Men and women often assume that males are more likely to be competitive, win-lose negotiators who want to maximize their own return. Women are expected to be more accommodating, win-win negotiators who try to preserve relationships by seeking to maximize the joint return achieved by the parties. If these assumptions are accurate, we might expect men to achieve better negotiating results than women. This article explores common gender-based beliefs that might affect bargaining interactions. It then compares the performance of male and female law students over the past sixteen years on Legal Negotiation course exercises to determine whether men or women achieve better results on negotiation exercises. The data suggest that negotiator gender does not significantly influence negotiation results.

The Inherent Tension Between Value Creation and Value Claiming During Bargaining Interactions

When individuals negotiate, they must initially use the Information Stage to create value by discussing the different issues to be addressed and by exploring the interests underlying those items. They must be willing to disclose their basic interests if progress is to be made, but they are usually not entirely candid for strategic purposes. They may over-state the degree to which they want items they think the other side values and under-state the degree to which they want items they believe the other side does not value. They then move into the Distributive Stage to decide how their joint surplus is to be divided. This is usually a highly competitive part of their interaction as each side endeavors to claim a greater share of the surplus. Once they have reached a tentative agreement, they should use the Cooperative Stage to see if they can still expand the overall pie and improve their respective positions. The inherent tension between value creation and value claiming results from the need for the participants to be sufficiently open during the Information Stage to let the parties know what they have to share, but not so open that they cannot use skilled techniques to let them claim a greater share of the surplus during the Distributive Stage.