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view the negotiation with a positive frame. This is tricky, however, since the anchor that
will lead to a positive frame for one negotiator is likely to lead to a negative frame for
the other. This suggests that when mediators meet with each party separately, they
need to present different anchors to create risk aversion in each party. Again, to affect
the frame, mediators also must emphasize the realistic risk of the situation, thus calling
attention to its uncertainty and leading both sides to prefer a sure settlement.
ESCALATION OF CONFLICT
Escalation of Conflict 171
Following decades of animosity, on March 18, 1990, baseball team owners and players
reached a four-year agreement to avert a strike that had threatened to cancel the 1990
baseball season. The agreement expired on December 31, 1993, and the 1994 baseball
season began without a new contract in place. The first offer came from the owners on
June 14, 1994, but it was well outside the bargaining range. Dysfunctional bargaining
ensued, and on August 12, the players went on strike. 1
The strike effectively ended the 1994 baseball season and destroyed approximately
$1 billion worth of financial opportunity for the owners and players. Food vendors, retailers,
baseball card companies, and fans also suffered in various ways during the
strike. The strike’s inefficiency was highlighted when the courts required the team owners
to accept the preexisting structure for the 1995 season while negotiations for the
future continued.
From 1986 to 1993, Major League Baseball operated at a profit; by 1993, annual
profits had risen to $36 million. The strike changed that picture. The owners lost
$375 million in 1994, $326 million in 1995, and between $100 million and $200 million
in 1996 (Grabiner, 1996). Meanwhile, players lost money, status, and bargaining power.
For at least several years, baseball’s position as America’s national pastime was
tarnished. The strike was an extremely costly and vivid example of a conflict that
entered an escalatory spiral.
In the midst of the controversy, Sebenius and Wheeler (1994) offered a potentially
advantageous strategy for resolving the disagreement: Continue the baseball season,
but do not allow the teams to receive revenue or the players to receive their pay.
Rather, revenues and forgone pay would go into a pool until a resolution was reached.
In the meantime, watching the funds pile up would be an impetus for both sides to
agree on a settlement. Sebenius and Wheeler further argued that the parties could set
aside a portion of the fund for charity (such as the Special Olympics) if they failed to
reach agreement in a timely fashion—again encouraging compromise while creating
positive rather than negative public relations. Overall, Sebenius and Wheeler outlined
a very wise strategy that would have been far more efficient than the strike.
So, why didn’t the parties follow this advice? Our answer is that because each party
was focused almost exclusively on beating the other side, they were primed to escalate
their commitment to their initial course of action. One sign that the parties were
1 Many observations about the 1994 baseball strike in this section were prompted by the analysis of Chris
Maxcy, Lisa Mroz, Keith Rakow, and Cynthia Safford in a course assignment for the MBA negotiations class
at the Kellogg Graduate School of Management of Northwestern University.