Chicken
The chicken tactic is named afterthe 1950s challenge, portrayed in the James Dean movie Rebel Without a Cause, of two people driving cars at each other ortoward a cliff until one person swerves to avoid disaster. The person whoswerves is labeled a chicken, and the other person is treated like a hero.Negotiators who use this tactic combine a large bluff with a threatened actionto force the other party to “chicken out” and give them what they want. Inlabor-management negotiations, management may tell the union representativesthat if they do not agree to the current contract offer the company will closethe factory and go out of business (or move to another state or country).Clearly this is a high-stakes gamble. On the one hand, management must bewilling to follow through on the threat – if the union callstheir bluff and they do not follow through, they will not be believed in thefuture. On the other hand, how can the union take the risk and call the bluff?If management is telling the truth, the company may actually close the factoryand move elsewhere.
The weakness of the chickentactic is that it turns negotiation into a serious game in which one or bothparties find it difficult to distinguish reality from postured negotiationpositions. Will the other party really follow through on his or her threats? Wefrequently cannot know for sure because the circ*mstances must be grave inorder for this tactic to be believable; but it is precisely when circ*mstancesare grave that a negotiator may be most tempted to use this tactic. Compare,for instance, the responses of Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush to Iraq’sdefiance of the United Nations weapons inspection program. It appears that Iraqfelt it could “stare down” President Bush because it had successfully avoidedoutright conflict during President Clinton’s term. The subsequent war in Iraqdemonstrated the error of this assessment.
The chicken tactic is verydifficult for a negotiator to defend against. To the extent that the commitmentcan be downplayed, reworded, or ignored, however, it can lose its power. Perhapsthe riskiest response is to introduce one’s own chicken tactic. At that pointneither party may be willing to back down in order not to lose face.Preparation and a thorough understanding of the situations of both parties areabsolutely essential for trying to identify where reality ends and the chickentactic begins. Use of external experts to verify information or to help toreframe the situation is another option.
