Growth vs Fixed Mindset and Distributive vs Integrative Bargaining
Following up from last week … more fixed and growth mindsets and what we can learn from management theory. This week distributive and integrative bargaining and their relationship to fixed and growth mindset.
Distributive bargaining is also sometimes referred to as ‘the fixed pie strategy’ of bargaining. This approach to negotiation involves allocating a fixed resource or set of resources among the bargainers. Because the resource or set of resources is fixed … limited … each party views the other party as an adversary. And this shows in the negotiation over how to allocate the resource or set of resources. Each bargainer tries to get the largest slice of the pie. In essence, this negotiation strategy requires acting in a defensive and reserved manner in the bargaining.
On the other hand integrative bargaining involves a joint initiative that will prove beneficial to all the negotiating parties. Rather than viewing the negotiation as a distribution of a fixed resource or set of resources … dividing up the pie … integrative bargaining views the resource or set of resources as NOT fix, as expandable. The goal is to expand the resource … make the pie bigger … in order that each negotiating team gets something of what they want. The bargaining efforts are directed at increasing the total payoff through mutual cooperation.
What does this have to do with fixed and growth mindset … other than the notion of the resource or set of resources as fixed or expandable? My hypothesis is that if you view students as having a fixed mindset you would tend to approach teaching from a distributive bargaining approach. Your goal as a teacher would be to get as much of the fixed resource … learning … out of your student as you can. And you may very well view your teaching relationship with the student as adversarial … the student wants to give up as little learning as possible whereas you want to extract as much learning as possible. And your choice of a distributive bargaining approach might be a function of your Theory X view of human nature.
On the other hand if you view students as having a growth mindset you would tend to approach teaching form an integrative bargaining approach. Your goal as a teacher would be to expand your students’ capacity to learn in order to get ever more learning from your students. You may very well view your teaching relationship with the student as collaborative … the students want to learn more than they are necessarily capable of at present and you want to work with the student to expand the learning capacity. And your choice of an integrative bargaining approach might be a function of your Theory Y view of human nature.