Enterprise Man

Center For Negotiation

Rules!

Here are the rules that negotiators must follow during the game.

We know that "rules are made to be broken" ... but we would appreciate your compliance anyway!

After reading some materials and completing a preliminary survey, you will log onto the internet from home for 5 minutes a day over 5 consecutive days and use an email account to submit your offers. Your opponent will do the same.

Every night, you will find out about your opponent's latest offer, think about your strategy, and then send me your subsequent offer.

If the fifth and final price offers of each negotiator match each other, then you have agreed on that price and your final profits will be calculated on the basis of that agreed-upon price. The higher the price, the better the seller will do and the worse the buyer will do in terms of profits.

But if the fifth and final price bids do not match exactly, then you will not have an agreement and both players will be forced to deal with the outside market. What does that mean?

Well, if you both really want to reach an agreement, you will have five rounds to converge on exactly the same price. However, if the powerful player does not really want to reach an agreement, he or she might just converge on the weak player's bid during the first four rounds -- just to lull the weak player into a false sense of security -- and then type in a nonsense number (like $999) in the final round to avoid agreement entirely.

That would be deceitful, but perfectly legal in this game!

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