Accountability and Coalitions: Evidence from a Negotiation Experiment

• Author: Robin Bouwman,Ad van Deemen,Etiënne Rouwette,Sandra van Thiel
• Date: 01 January 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12858
• Published date: 01 January 2018

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 78, Iss. 1, pp. 37–47. © 2017 The

Authors. Public Administration Review

published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on

behalf of American Society for Public

Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12858.

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited,

the use is non-commercial and no modif‌i cations or adaptations are made.

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Accountability and Coalitions:

Evidence from a Negotiation Experiment

Ad van Deemen is professor of

decision theory in strategic management

at the Institute for Management Research,

Radboud University, the Netherlands. His

research focuses on individual and collective

decision making from a game-theoretic and

social-choice-theoretic perspective.

E-mail: a.vandeemen@fm.ru.nl

Sandra van Thiel is professor of public

management in the Department of Public

Administration and director of the Institute

for Management Research at Radboud

University, the Netherlands. Her research

focus is on semiautonomous agencies,

public management, and research methods.

She has published in the

Journal of Public

Administration Research and Theory,

Governance, Public Management Review,

and the

International Public Management

Journal,

and her books have been published

by Palgrave Macmillan and Routledge. She

is editor in chief of the

International Journal

of Public Sector Management

.

E-mail: s.vanthiel@fm.ru.nl

Robin Bouwman is a doctoral student

in public administration at the Institute

for Management Research, Radboud

University, the Netherlands. His research

focuses on negotiation and coalition

negotiations and bargaining in the public

sector context. He uses lab and classroom

experiments to study negotiations and

negotiators. Additionally, he is interested

in individual and group decision making

and experimental research methodology.

E-mail: r.bouwman@fm.ru.nl

Abstract: This article tests the effect of accountability on negotiation outcomes in a face-to-face classroom experiment.

Student participants were asked to form coalitions in groups of three. In the treatment condition, negotiators were

held accountable by a personal forum during the formation of the coalition. In the control condition, negotiators were

not held accountable. Results show that accountability leads to lower group performance in coalition negotiations.

Accountability also reduced the willingness of negotiators to include all negotiators in a “grand coalition.” Rather,

accountable negotiators reached agreement with a subset of negotiators. Accountability increased the odds of reaching

no agreement. These findings challenge the idea of increased performance as a result of public accountability in the

context of coalition negotiations.

Evidence for Practice

• Accountable negotiators are less likely to form coalitions that include all negotiators—a so-called grand

coalition—because negotiators focus on their individual results.

• Accountable negotiators show lower group performance in negotiations.

• The consequences of accountability—such as sanctions—have little impact on the performance of

negotiators when negotiations are repeated.

N egotiation is one of the most common

activities of all employees (Lægreid 2000 ;

Susskind and Ozawa 1983 ). Negotiations

focus, for example, on buying and selling goods

or on problem solving. In the public sector,

negotiations involve the coordination of inter- and

intradepartmental tasks, the acquisition of goods

and services, and the allocation of budgets (Dijkstra,

Van Assen, and Stokman 2008). An example is the

implementation of health care policies, which includes

many stakeholders. During the implementation of

these policies, representatives of patients’ federations,

hospitals, and government have to negotiate practical

implementation (see O’Toole 2000 ).

Although the outcomes of negotiations by public

servants can have great societal impacts, negotiation

as a research topic has not gained much attention

from public administration scholars. Some exceptions

are work on public-private partnerships (Medda

2007 ), decision making in policy implementation

(Torenvlied and Akkerman 2004 ), and labor relations

and collective bargaining (Perry and Angle 1979 ;

Riccucci 2011 ). As public organizations contribute to

the public good by definition, individual negotiation

outcomes by civil servants are often public outcomes

as well.

Public accountability is consistently rated as the

most important public value by civil servants

(Van der Wal, de Graaf, and Lasthuizen 2008).

Recent developments in Western democracies

have only bolstered accountability measures by

public organizations (Bovens, Schillemans, and

’t Hart 2008, 225). However, competing claims

have been made about the effects of accountability.

Accountability is often viewed as an instrument to

prevent corruption of those in power. It is seen as

instrument to increase perceived trustworthiness,

enhance integrity, and increase performance

(Bovens, Schillemans, and ’t Hart 2008). The

problem of who exactly is to blame is a well-known

difficulty of accountability (Thompson 2005 ).

Accountability may lead to window-dressing (de

Wolf and Janssens 2007) or to task overload for

public servants.

While accountability is known to have an impact

on the thoughts, feelings, and actions of individuals

(Lerner and Tetlock 1999 ), public administration

scholars have neglected its potential effects on

specific activities of public servants, such as

negotiation. Social psychologists have established

that individual negotiators are more “contentious”

when they expect to be held accountable (Ben-Yoav

Robin Bouwman

Sandra van Thiel

Ad van Deemen

Etiënne Rouwette

Radboud University

Etiënne Rouwette is professor of

business administration and methodology

at the Institute for Management Research,

Radboud University, the Netherlands. His

research focuses on group decision-making

processes and decision support.

E-mail: e.rouwette@fm.ru.nl