Team-On-Team Negotiation: How Internal Structure Shapes What Teams Can Do at the Table

Team negotiation research presents a paradox: teams sometimes achieve more integrative outcomes than solo negotiators, yet in other cases they escalate competitiveness, erode trust, and damage relationships. Existing theory has not resolved this inconsistency, in part because it treats negotiating teams as unitary actors with fixed positions and aligned interests. The authors argue this assumption overlooks a central constraint of team-on-team negotiation: before any adaptive external exchange can occur, teams must internally authorize revisions to their positions as new information emerges. Drawing on evidence from research on team negotiation, multiparty negotiation, and team design, they introduce mandate revisability, the ease with which a team can reopen its internal positions during ongoing negotiation, as the key link between intra-team structure and inter-team behavior. They identify five structural features that determine this capacity: decision rules, authority concentration, communication patterns, agenda design, and role differentiation – and show how they render team negotiation outcomes systematically predictable rather than situationally inconsistent. Behaviors often interpreted as competitive rigidity frequently reflect internal authorization constraints rather than strategic intent. They discuss implications for future research and practice.