MEASURES OF JOINT PERFORMANCE IN DYADIC MIXED-MOTIVE NEGOTIATIONS

This paper reexamines measures of joint performance and demonstrates that all of them confound distributional considerations in at least some negotiating settings. In other words, for every possible measure, negotiating settings exist in which adoption of that measure establishes particular distributions of resources as normatively optimal. Adoption of such measures, therefore, provides implicit incentives for negotiators to act against their own self interest for the sake of maximizing joint performance. It was for precisely this reason that joint profit was rejected by theoreticians as a measure of joint performance applicable to all situations. By the same token, therefore, no universally applicable measure of joint performance can exist. (C) 1995 Academic Press, Inc.