A multi-level game approach to labor-management negotiations

This paper deals with the problem of how to model the internal bureaucratic politics of a negotiation participant. What if a negotiator represents many factions with different interests, as often encountered in the relationship between an organization’s representative and its members? A multi-level game approach is proposed and labor-management negotiations are analyzed from the multi-level game perspective. New solution concepts (N, R, and NR stabilities) for the multi-level game structure are derived and generalized. Two simple illustrations are also provided to illustrate why, in certain cases, a particular tentative agreement that could be made between labor union and management representatives could fail to be ratified by the members of each group. The multi-level game approach presented in this paper provides a promising new path for investigating complex labor-management negotiation processes.