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Negotiations between buyers and sellers (or suppliers) of goods and services have become increasingly important due to the growing trend towards international purchasing, outsourcing and global supply networks together with the high uncertainty associated with them. This paper examines the effect of ambiguity aversion on price negotiations using multiple-priors-based real options with non-extreme outcomes. We study price negotiation between a buyer and seller in a dual contingentclaims setting (call option holding buyer vs. put option holding seller) to derive optimal agreement conditions under ambiguity with and without social network effects. We find that while higher ambiguity aversion raises the threshold for commitment for the seller, it has equivocal effects on the buyer's negotiation prospects in the absence of network control. Conversely when network position and relative bargaining power are accounted for, we find the buyer's implicit price (or negotiation threshold) decreases (or increases) unequivocally with increasing aversion to ambiguity. Extending extant real options research on price negotiation to the case of ambiguity, this set of results provides new insights into the role of ambiguity aversion and network structures in buyer-seller relationships, including how they influence the range of negotiation agreement between buyers and sellers. The results also help assist managers in formulating robust buying/selling strategies for bargaining under uncertainty. By knowing their network positions and gathering background information or inferring the other party's ambiguity tolerance beforehand, buyers and sellers can anticipate where the negotiation is heading in terms of price negotiation range and mutual agreement possibilities.

Concerned with the hidden costs of outsourcing, this paper examines the role of ambiguity and trust in partial outsourcing decisions from the perspective of real options theory. We study pricing and quantity dynamics between an ambiguity averse vendor and a less (more) trusting client in a leader-follower framework with fixed timing. We find that the client's partial outsourcing quantity increases with the vendor's ambiguity if outsourcing is meant for cost-saving purposes. The effect of trust on outsourcing quantity, meanwhile, is jointly moderated by the vendor's ambiguity and quality of shared information forecasts when cost advantages are exaggerated. In terms of pricing effects, the vendor increases (decreases) her threshold with increasing ambiguity for long-term (short-term) contracts. These insights hold under the multiple-priors and worst-case ambiguity specification. When Choquet ambiguity and rank-dependent utility are considered, more complex and subtle dynamics are obtained. Ambiguity has additional non-linear effects on outsourcing quantity due to heterogeneity in ambiguity preferences (seeking vs. aversion) and probability weighting. The vendor's price not only increases (decreases) with increasing ambiguity-seeking for long-term (short-term) contracts, but also with ambiguity aversion when specific risk-return ratio conditions are met. Trust effects are qualitatively similar under both ambiguity specifications.

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