Team-on-team negotiation: How internal structure shapes what teams can do at the table

Team negotiation research presents a paradox: teams sometimes achieve more integrative outcomes than solo negotiators, yet in other cases they escalate competitiveness and harm relational outcomes. Existing theory has not resolved this inconsistency, in part because it treats negotiating teams as if they could change positions as easily as individual negotiators. We argue this assumption overlooks a central constraint of team-on-team negotiation: before any adaptive external exchange can occur, teams must internally authorize revisions to their positions as new information emerges. Drawing on evidence from research on team negotiation, multiparty negotiation, and team design, we identify this internal capacity as a recurring but under-specified theme in prior work. We refer to it as mandate revisability: the ease with which a team can reopen, revise, and reauthorize its internal position during ongoing negotiation. We then show how five structural features - decision rules, authority concentration, communication patterns, agenda design, and role differentiation - shape this capacity and, in turn, link intra-team structure to inter-team behavior. This perspective helps explain why behaviors often interpreted as competitive rigidity may instead reflect internal authorization constraints. It also shows how seemingly inconsistent team negotiation outcomes can become more systematically predictable. We discuss implications for future research and practice.