Negotiation Teamwork: The Impact of Information Distribution and Accountability on Performance Depends on the Relationship among Team Members

We examined how the distribution of information among team members and accountability pressures affected the quality of negotiated settlements reached among teams of friends negotiating against teams of strangers. The main conclusions of the experiment may be summarized by the following findings: (1) Teams of strangers reaped a greater share of the joint profit than did teams of friends when teammates were accountable to a supervisor as opposed to negotiating strictly on their own behalf. (2) Teams of strangers also reaped a marginally greater share of the joint profit than did teams of friends when teammates possessed unique, as opposed to common, information about their own team's preferences. (3) Not surprisingly, teams of friends were more cohesive than were teams of strangers; however, teams of friends were also more concerned about maintaining their relationship than were teams of strangers. (4) Teams of friends felt least cohesive when they were accountable to a supervisor, whereas teams of strangers felt most cohesive when they were accountable. Similarly, friends indicated greater relationship concerns when having to deal with distributed information, whereas information distribution had no effect on the relationship concerns of strangers. (5) For teams of strangers, greater team cohesiveness was positively correlated with better performance. (6) Moreover, when teams of strangers felt more cohesive than their opponents, they earned more than teams of strangers who felt less cohesive.