The study of bargaining power and its role in negotiations has a long history in operations management research. Much of this research has involved buyer–supplier exchanges and has often hinged on the assumption that powerful firms negotiate to wield (fully) their power for favorable outcomes. Yet, it is unclear to what extent firms transform their potential power into realized power. Building on insights grounded in resource dependence theory and literature on competitive dynamics and organization design, we theorize that structural factors (i.e., decentralization, spheres of influence, and mutual dependence) constrain firms from fully realizing their potential power. In doing so, we center on a more nuanced context—multimarket buyer–supplier exchanges, wherein buyers and suppliers handle multiple exchanges across different product markets. We use two controlled negotiation experiments to test our hypotheses. Our results show that in multimarket exchanges, three key factors (and how they sometimes interact) constrain power use. These results offer boundary conditions to extant theory. Most profoundly, our results reveal that centralization (traditionally viewed as a structural lever to enhance power use) alone does not affect power use but has distinct effects conditional on other factors—countering theory and challenging best practices in industry.

中文翻译：

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放在桌子上吗？考察多市场买卖双方交易中未实现的议价能力

讨价还价能力及其在谈判中的作用的研究在运营管理研究中有着悠久的历史。这项研究大部分涉及买卖双方之间的交流，并且通常取决于一个假设，即有实力的公司进行谈判以（充分）行使其权力以取得有利的结果。但是，尚不清楚企业在多大程度上将其潜在权力转化为已实现的权力。基于资源依赖理论和有关竞争动力学和组织设计的文献的见解，我们认为结构性因素（即权力下放，势力范围和相互依赖）会限制企业充分实现其潜在能力。在此过程中，我们着眼于更加细微的环境-多市场买方与供应商之间的交易，其中买方和供应商处理不同产品市场之间的多次交易。我们使用两个受控的协商实验来检验我们的假设。我们的结果表明，在多市场交易中，三个关键因素（以及它们有时如何相互作用）限制了电力的使用。这些结果为现有理论提供了边界条件。最深刻的是，我们的研究结果表明，集中化（传统上被视为是增强电力使用）本身并不会影响电力使用，但会在其他因素（反理论和具有挑战性的行业最佳实践）的影响下产生明显的影响。