Pemberton In Class Activity

For this blog post, I wanted to briefly comment on the Pemberton activity where we assumed the role of owners of a local general store, and had to negotiate with another general store on which store, if any, was going to be open for business on Sundays.  Previously, town ordinances prevented any store from being open on Sundays.  Due to increased competition from a nearby mall, the thought of being open became a primary concern for both local stores.  During the activity, my partner and I noticed that many of the competing groups wanted to agree to remain closed for all remaining rounds, so both stores could earn a profit of $20,000.  While most of the agreements to stay closed help up, a few teams decided to betray the other store by switching to open in the last round, resulting in them receiving a substantially high profit, while the other team suffered a substantial loss.  During negotiation, my team, and the team we were matched up with, devised a solution to this problem.  Both of our teams also decided to remain closed to benefit each other. To ensure each team stayed loyal, we filled out our score sheets for the remaining rounds during the negotiation, so that way no team could go against their word of remaining closed.  This prevented the other team from quickly changing their sign during the revealing period, because their score sheet already had closed for every round.  If a team wanted to take the safe route of remaining closed every round after negotiation, I think if they would have used the same strategy, they would have been guaranteed they outcome they wanted.