Information AboutNegotiation |
|
Negotiation is the process whereby interested parties resolve disputes, agree upon courses of action, bargain for individual or collective advantage, and/or attempt to craft outcomes which serve their mutual interests. It is usually regarded as a form of Alternative Dispute Resolution . The first step in negotiation is to determine whether the situation is in fact a negotiation. The essential qualities of negotiation are: the existence of two parties who share an important objective but have some significant difference(s). The purpose of the negotiating conference to seek to compromise the difference(s). The outcome of the negotiating conference may be a compromise satisfactory to both sides, a standoff (failure to reach a satisfactory compromise) or a standoff with an agreement to try again at a later time. Negotiation differs from "influencing" and "group decision making." See diagram . APPROACHES TO NEGOTIATION Given the above definition, one can see negotiation occurring in business, non-profit organizations, government branches, legal proceedings, among nations and in personal situations such as marriage, parenting and others. ''See also Negotiation Theory .'' The advocate's approach In the advocacy approach, a skilled negotiator usually serves as advocate for one party to the negotiation and attempts to obtain the most favorable outcomes possible for that party. In this process the negotiator attempts to determine the minimum outcome(s) the other party is (or parties are) willing to accept, then adjusts their demands accordingly. A "successful" negotiation in the advocacy approach is when the negotiator is able to obtain all or most of the outcomes their party desires, but without driving the other party to permanently break off negotiations, unless the BATNA (see below) is acceptable. Traditional negotiating is sometimes called ''win-lose'' because of the assumption of a fixed "pie", that one person's gain results in another person's loss. Another view is that in negotiation both parties are equals by definition and that the best possible outcome is reached when both parties agree to it. If the two parties were not equals, the stronger party would dictate the outcome and there would be no negotiation at all. The win/win negotiator's approach During the early part of the 20th century, scholars such as Mary Parker Follett developed ideas suggesting that agreement often can be reached if parties look not at their stated positions but rather at their underlying needs. During the 1960s, Gerard I. Nierenberg recognized the powerful role of negotiation in resolving disputes in personal, business and international relations. He published a bestselling book called ''The Art of Negotiation'', which has become a staple negotiation publication. He believes that the philosophies of the negotiators determine the direction a negotiation takes. His ''Everybody Wins'' philosophy assures that all parties benefit from the negotiation process which also yields more successful outcomes than the adversarial “winner takes all” approach. In the Seventies, practitioners and researchers began to develop ''win-win'' approaches to negotiation. The publication of ''Getting to YES'' by Harvard 's Roger Fisher and William Ury , was a revolution in the field of negotiation. It became an international bestseller and continues to influence generations of negotiators around the world. The ideas of the book are simple and important -- such as "looking behind positions for interests" and "inventing options before deciding." The book's approach, referred to as Principled Negotiation , is also sometimes called Mutual Gains Bargaining . The mutual gains approach has been effectively applied in environmental situations (see Lawrence Susskind and Adil Najam ) as well as Labor Relations where the parties (e.g. Management and a Labor Union ) frame the negotiation as "problem solving" and Chester L. Karrass . There are a tremendous number of other scholars who have contributed to the field of negotiation, including Sara Cobb at George Mason University, Len Riskin at the University of Missouri, Howard Raiffa at Harvard, Robert McKersie and Lawrence Susskind at MIT, and Adil Najam and Jeswald Salacuse at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. Each in their own right is a leader in the field. New terrains: the role of emotions According to negotiation scholars Michael Moffitt and Robert Bordone (in their Handbook of Dispute Resolution), the newest frontiers in the field of negotiation include such topics as exploring the role of emotions in negotiation. Indeed, the Harvard Negotiation Project's Roger Fisher and Daniel Shapiro published the groundbreaking bestseller "Beyond Reason: Using Emotions as You Negotiate," a follow-up to Getting to YES. Beyond Reason suggests that negotiations need not be at the mercy of emotions; it discusses five "core concerns" that anyone can use to stimulate helpful emotions. NEGOTIATION AS A PROCESS A negotiation process can be divided into six steps in three phases:
TACTICS There are many Tactics used by skilled negotiators, including:
SEE ALSO
REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING
EXTERNAL LINKS
|
|
|