ASSESSING THE SOCIAL DETERMINANTS OF NEGOTIATOR PREFERENCES - THE CASE OF A COLLECTIVE-BARGAINING SIMULATION

This study was an examination of how the preferences of a negotiator a re formed in bargaining situations in which an individual represents a group of individuals. The experiment used a policy-capturing approach within the context of a collective bargaining simulation. The literat ure on industrial relations, principal-agent relations, managerial int ravention, and frustration-regression mechanisms was used to construct the simulation. These procedures also enabled a test of the voice mec hanism that is hypothesized for unions. The importance of a bargaining issue to a union negotiator was determined by the following four cues (in decreasing order of importance): member preferences, management's capacity to concede the demands, the national union's support, and ma nagement's resistance to the issue. Results indicated support for the voice mechanism. Implications and directions for future research are d iscussed.