Using Integrative Negioation to Solve the Pemberton Prisoners Dilemma

For this blog post, I wanted to touch on two concepts discussed during Wednesday's class, and relate them to the Pemberton activity done in class a few weeks ago.  First, we received a more detailed description of the prisoners’ dilemma diagram.  We discussed a new chart that shows how well we understand the other party to the game bases on our decisions to compete or cooperate.  In the Pemberton stores activity, my group and the group representing the other store both chose to cooperate by remaining closed every Sunday.  According to the new prisoners’ dilemma chart we discussed in class, this means that both groups understood each other, which resulted in joint problem solving.  I feel this is accurate because we realized early what the goals of the opposing were, and coincidently, they were the same as the opposing group.  We understood that each store wanted to make as much as they could in the safest way possible, which led us to jointly solve the problem by agreeing to remain closed every Sunday, which resulted in a $20,000 profit every round.  This understanding of each other also led us to engage in integrative negotiation, where we had to focus on the interests of the other group in order to reap the best results for ourselves.  Similar to the orange example in class, each group wanted to make the most money in the safest ways possible.  We invented an option to achieve this desired mutual gain by deciding to remain closed very round.  As a result, both groups received a very hefty profit, while other groups who did not engage in integrative negotiation received much smaller profits.