Expanding the Pie by Adding Issues: The effects of issue timing on objective and subjective value

Abstract: “Expand the pie before dividing it” is a core tenet of Fisher and Ury’s (1981) principled negotiation. In the current study, I used a paradigm that allows to investigate adding new issues to a deal in a quantifiable role-play negotiation task. Building on prior research that showed that negotiators achieve more integrative agreements when they add new issues right from the start of the negotiation rather than towards the end (Steinel, 2023), the current study explored the downsides of bringing in additional issues at the very beginning or at the very end of a negotiation, and showed that expanding the pie in the middle of the negotiation leads to most integrative agreements and can also increase the subjective value (Curhan et al., 2006) of negotiators who benefit from the expansion of the pie.

Keywords: Integrative negotiation, timing of issues, expand the pie, adding optional issues