MLB and Players Negotiation Strategies

Description of two or three factors (power, influence, coalitions) that contributed to or
supported the negotiation strategies and analysis of their effectiveness
Power and influence are important factors that determine the outcomes of
negotiations. Power relates to the alternatives that a given party has in negotiations
(Wiltermuth, Raj, & Wood, 2018). The more alternatives that a party has the more powerful
it is in the negotiation process and more likely it is to achieve an outcome that is favorable to
it. Generally, high power parties in a negotiation often prevail against their low power
counterparts. It has been found that low-power negotiations are likely to be exposed to
intimidations, concede more in the negotiations, are unlikely to make first offers, which puts
them at a negotiating disadvantage, and are, therefore, likely to end up with unfavorable deals
(Wiltermuth et al., 2018).
Power can either be based on resources or context. Parties with more human or
financial resources tend to have more power than their less-resourced counterparts. In regard
to context, power depends on availability of alternatives to the parties (Wiltermuth et al.,
2018). A party with multiple alternatives in a given situation may choose to exit the
negotiations and pursue the other alternatives that are available to it.
In the negotiation between Major League Baseball (MLB) and The Player’s
Association, MLB had more resource-based power. MLB represents team owners who are
often independently very wealthy individuals (Kepner, 2020). The Player’s Association, on
the other hand, represents players who have a very wide salary range. Some players,
especially senior players, are wealthy enough to be described as millionaires. Other players,
however, live pay-check to pay-check (Kepner, 2020). On average, the team owners are often

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much wealthier than the players. Thus, while the owners can survive for long without games,
many players cannot financially survive for long without receiving their salaries.
The MLB and The Player’s Association, however, have an evenly matched context-
based power. The MLB wanted games to resume so that they could make money from,
among others, broadcast deals (Kepner, 2020). However, there is no way that the games
could be played without the players. The players also needed salaries but there was no way
that they could get their salaries without agreeing to the demands, at least some, of the MLB.
Apart from power, influence too affects outcomes of negotiations. Influence includes
factors that individuals consider when deciding whether or not to comply with the requests of
their negotiating partners. Among the principles of influence are liking and scarcity.
Generally, individuals are likely to comply with requests that are made by people that they
know well and like due to factors such as sharing of common interests or even physical
attraction (Wiltermuth et al., 2018). With regards to scarcity, the fewer the alternatives that
are available to a party, the more likely they are to be influenced to comply with the demands
of the other party.
Power and influence played a key role in the strategies and approaches that the two
parties took. Being evenly-matched in regard to context-based power, the two parties took a
compromising strategy. In this strategy, both parties forgo their ideal outcomes in favor of a
deal that is moderately satisfactory to both parties. This approach was effective because given
the relative evenness of power between the two parties, it is unlikely that they would have
reached any agreement that represented a “win-lose” outcome. Thanks to the strategy of
compromise, that the two parties took, they reached an agreement where players got full
prorated salaries and the owners got to have a season of fewer games so that they would not
lose a lot money through holding games in stadiums without fans.

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Development of two or more additional factors (power, influence, coalitions) that could
have been used to improve negotiation and analysis of why these factors may nor may

not be more beneficial

Both parties could have used a number of strategies that leveraged their power and
influence to get better outcomes for themselves. For instance, The Players Association could
have adopted the strategy of setting very ambitious goals. This is a strategy that is often
employed by parties that are at a power disadvantage (Wiltermuth et al., 2018). By setting
highly ambitious goals, even if they climb down by a great measure, they are likely to
achieve a desirable goal. In the case of The Players Association they would have set the goal
of having their full regular salaries and play the full number of games in a season, with or
without the fans. With such an ambitious goal, they would likely have achieved a satisfactory
outcome as studies have shown that parties that set ambitious goals often achieve better
results than those that set less ambitious goals.
Another tactic that The Players Association would have used to get better results is to
put their offer first. Making the first offer usually gives the party making the offer a
significant bargaining advantage (Wiltermuth et al., 2018). This advantage is because the
party that makes the first offer anchors the expectations of the other party. The other party
will, therefore, present an offer that tries to meet the expectations of the party that made the
first offer.
It is not just the players that could exploit their position to achieve better outcomes,
the MLB too had a wide range of strategies that they could have used to achieve better
outcomes for themselves. For instance, they could use their advantage of financial resources
over the players to walk away from the negotiations. Unlike The Player’s Association which
represents players, some wealthy and some who live paycheck-to-paycheck, the MLB

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represents team owners who are all wealthy with most of their wealth derived from sources
other than the teams that they own. Since, they, unlike the players, can afford to stay for long
without income from the games, they were less desperate to have the negotiations reach a
settlement. Thus, they could walk away from the negotiation in order to put pressure on the
teams to accede to their demands. The downside of this strategy, however, is that it would
have created bad feelings among the players which would have made it even more difficult to
reach a settlement.
Ethical approach practiced within the organization and its impact on the negotiation

process

Negotiation ethics guide parties in a negotiation process so that they refrain from
conducting themselves in an unacceptable manner. In the negotiation between MLB and The
Player’s Association, the parties adopted utilitarian ethical approach.
Utilitarian ethical approach seeks to achieve outcomes that maximize the well-being
of all the parties that both directly and indirectly involved in the negotiations (Smart, 2020).
For MLB, the best outcome for them would one where they lose the least amount of money
due to the health and economic crisis created by the coronavirus pandemic. As for the
players, the most ideal outcome would be one where they do not take any salary cut.
Resumption of games would be the ideal outcome for fans and sports broadcasting media
organizations. A utilitarian approach would seek to meet the needs of all of these parties. By
using this approach, the two parties arrived at a compromise that partially satisfied all the
parties that were invested in the outcome of the negotiations.
Even though the parties took a utilitarian approach, some behaviors that were
exhibited during the negotiation process can be considered to be unethical. For instance,
MLB used emotional manipulation to achieve its goals. Emotional manipulation involves use

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of tactics that intentionally affect one of the party’s emotional state with the goal of swaying
them from making decisions that are logical (Gunia, 2019). MLB used this tactic when it
routinely leaked the negotiations to the media. The leaks were selectively made and were
calculated to paint the players as not only disloyal but also greedy (Baumgaertner, 2020). The
goal of this media leaks was to turn the public against the players. It was hoped that pressure
from the public would then force the representatives of the players to concede more to the
demands of MLB.
Another unethical practice that was conducted by the MLB was misrepresentation of
their position. They claimed that all they wanted was to have the games restarted in order to
give hope to the game’s fans who were suffering from the twin economic and health crises
resulting from the coronavirus pandemic (Kepner, 2020). This was, however, not the case as
MLB’s true motive was to have the players to share or even shoulder the bulk of the financial
loss resulting from coronavirus pandemic that had prevented fans from attending MLB
games.
Additionally, MLB conducted itself in an unethical manner when they backed out of
the agreement that they had made with the players in March, 2020. In the March agreement,
the players agreed to have their salaries prorated with an 82-game season in mind (Kepner,
2020). MLB, however, reneged from this agreement later and sought to have the negotiations
start again because they realized that the agreement was not going to work in its interests
since fans could not attend games due to the health risks of contracting coronavirus.

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References

Baumgaertner, G. (2020, May 18). Is Covid-19 exposing MLB players as exploited workers
or greedy millionaires? The Guardian
https://amp.theguardian.com/sport/2020/may/18/is-covid-19-exposing-mlb-players-
as-exploited-workers-or-greedy-millionaires
Gunia, B. C. (2019). Ethics in Negotiation: Causes and Consequences. Academy of
Management Perspectives, 33(1), 3-11.
Kepner, T. (2020, June 22). Owners Vote to Hold M.L.B Season After Players Reject Latest
Offer. New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/22/sports/baseball/mlb-season-schedule-vote.html
Smart, J. J. C. (2020). Utilitarianism and its applications. In New directions in Ethics (pp. 24-
41). Routledge.
Wiltermuth, S. S., Raj, M., & Wood, A. (2018). How perceived power influences the
consequences of dominance expressions in negotiations. Organizational Behavior and
Human Decision Processes, 146, 14-30.