Are strategies for women in compensation negotiations more appealing when it is explained how they are meant to impact negotiation outcomes?

Abstract

Women perceive specific strategies developed to support their performance in compensation negotiations as ineffective and are unlikely to use them—suggesting an implementation gap. We examined whether providing theoretical rationales—explaining how specific strategies are meant to work—attenuates this gap. Furthermore, we explored a novel cause of it: women's expectations regarding the perpetuation of gender roles upon using a strategy. In two studies (N = 1,254), we observed that regardless of the provision of the rationales, women expected all examined specific strategies to be less economically effective and most of them to perpetuate gender roles more than regular assertiveness. Moreover, especially women's expectations regarding economic outcomes decreased their intentions to use most specific strategies. Women also expected most specific strategies to lead to less favorable social evaluations than yielding, which again led to their lower intentions to use them. Altogether, negotiation trainers and educators should consider that explaining how specific strategies are meant to work is not enough to close the implementation gap and to reduce gender inequality in negotiations. To attenuate the implementation gap, they may need to enable women to more fully experience how using specific strategies can improve their negotiation performance.