Rational Inefficient Compromises in Negotiation

Korhonen, Phillips, Teich and Wallenius (1998), in their letter to the Editor, observe with some dismay that people are often not willing to improve the compromises they have achieved through negotiations and provide some possible explanations and remedies. In this note we attempt to address several of the concerns raised in the letter and point the reader to relevant literature. Acceptance of inefficient compromises has been researched from different perspectives, as we note in section 2, and we suggest that several possible explanations already exist. Some of them are presented in Sections 3 and 4. The type of the experiment that has been used may also provide some insights as indicated in Section 5. Implications for decision and negotiation support are briefly discussed in Section 6 and a brief conclusion in Section 7.