Proactive Non-Specific Compensation for Negotiators who are Extremely Dependent

Negotiators must often negotiate from a position of low power relative to their counterpart, which can leave them at a disadvantage. The current research addresses how negotiators can help overcome this disadvantage by exploring a negotiation strategy that is especially helpful for low power negotiators. Building off the work on integrative negotiations, we propose that low power negotiators can use non-specific compensation (Pruitt & Rubin, 1986) to help them achieve their negotiation goals. We explore two specific forms of non-specific compensation, prospective favors and prospective purchases. We argue and show that while both strategies help low power negotiators achieve their goals, using prospective favors leads negotiators’ counterparts to see them as having moral motives and using prospective purchases leads negotiators’ counterparts to see them as having business motives. Such perceptions, we argue, will have an effect on future negotiation interactions between the parties.