Everything about Negotiations totally explained
» For Wikipedia's negotiation policy, see . For other uses, see Negotiation (disambiguation).
Broadly speaking,
negotiation is an interaction of influences. Such interactions, for example, include the process of resolving disputes, agreeing upon courses of action, bargaining for individual or collective advantage, or crafting outcomes to satisfy various interests. Negotiation is thus a form of
alternative dispute resolution.
Negotiation involves three basic elements: process, behavior and substance. The process refers to how the parties negotiate: the context of the negotiations, the parties to the negotiations, the tactics used by the parties, and the sequence and stages in which all of these play out. Behavior refers to the relationships among these parties, the communication between them and the styles they adopt. The substance refers to what the parties negotiate over: the agenda, the issues (positions and - more helpfully - interests), the options, and the agreement(s) reached at the end.
Skilled negotiators may use a variety of tactics ranging from negotiation hypnosis, to a straight forward presentation of demands or setting of preconditions to more deceptive approaches such as
cherry picking. Intimidation and
salami tactics may also play a part in swaying the outcome of negotiations.
Alternative dispute resolution
Negotiation is the one primary method of
alternative dispute resolution, typically evidenced by a trained negotiator acting on behalf of a particular organization or position. Compare this to
mediation where a disinterested third party listens to each sides' arguments and attempts to help craft an agreement between the parties. Lastly,
arbitration is similar to a legal proceeding, whereby both sides make an argument as to the merits of their "case" and then the arbitrator decides the outcome both parties should follow (non-binding arbitration) or must follow (binding arbitration).
The key to Negotiation is information.
Approaches to negotiation
Given the above definition, negotiation occurs in business, non-profit organizations, government branches, legal proceedings, among nations and in personal situations such as marriage, divorce, parenting, and everyday life. These approaches can be learned through classes or seminars on negotiation.
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
best alternative to a negotiated agreement (BATNA) 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. This is only true, however, if only a single issue needs to be resolved, such as a price in a simple sales negotiation. If multiple issues are discussed, differences in the parties' preferences make win-win negotiation possible. For example, in a labor negotiation, the union might prefer job security over wage gains. If the employers have opposite preferences, a trade is possible that's beneficial to both parties. Such a negotiation is therefore not an adversarial
zero-sum game.
The "win/win" negotiator's approach
During the early part of the twentieth century, academics 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 interests and requirements to reach a decision that benefits both parties.
In the 1970s, practitioners and researchers began to develop
win-win approaches to negotiation. Win-win is taken from Economic Game Theory, and has been adopted by negotiation North American academics to loosely mean Principled Negotiation.
Getting to YES was published by
Roger Fisher and
William Ury as part of the
Harvard negotiation project. 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 (for example
management and a
labor union) frame the negotiation as "problem solving".
There are a tremendous number of other scholars who have contributed to the field of negotiation, including
Gerard E. Watzke at Tulane University,
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.
Emotion in negotiation
Emotions play an important part in the negotiation process, although it's only in recent years that their effect is being studied. Emotions have the potential to play either a positive or negative role in negotiation. During negotiations, the decision as to whether or not settle, rests in part on emotional factors. Negative emotions can cause intense and even irrational behavior, and can cause conflicts to escalate and negotiations to break down, while positive emotions facilitate reaching an agreement and help to maximize joint gains.
Affect effect:
Dispositional affects affect the various stages of the negotiation process: which strategies are planned to be used, which strategies are actually chosen, the way the other party and its intentions are perceived, the willingness to reach an agreement and the final outcomes. Positive affectivity (PA) and negative affectivity (NA) of one or more of the negotiating sides can lead to very different outcomes.
Positive affect in negotiation
Even before the negotiation process starts, people in a positive mood have more confidence, and higher tendencies to plan to use a cooperative strategy. and more cooperative strategies. Indeed, compared with negotiators with negative or natural affectivity, negotiators with positive affectivity reached more agreements and tended to honor those agreements more.
Post negotiation positive affect has beneficial consequences as well. It increases satisfaction with achieved outcome and influences one’s desire for future interactions. Moreover, because anger makes negotiators more self-centered in their preferences, it increases the likelihood that that'll reject profitable offers. However, expression of negative emotions during negotiation can sometimes be beneficial: legitimately expressed anger can be an effective way to show one's commitment, sincerity, and needs.
A possible implication of this model is, for example, that the positive effects PA has on negotiations (as described above) will be seen only when either motivation or ability are low.
The effect of the partner’s emotions
Most studies on emotion in negotiations focus on the effect of the negotiator’s own emotions on the process. However, what the other party feels might be just as important, as
group emotions are known to affect processes both at the group and the personal levels.
When it comes to negotiations, trust in the other party is a necessary condition for its emotion to affect, It provoked both dominating and yielding behaviors of the opponent.
In real life there's self-selection to which negotiation one gets into, which effects the emotional commitment, motivation and interests. However this isn't the case in lab studies.
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