Negotiation Management Department

Negotiation

comes from the Latin neg (no) and otsia (leisure) referring to businessmen who, unlike the patricians, had no leisure time in their industriousness; it held the meaning of business (le négoce in French) until the 17th century when it took on the diplomatic connotation as a dialogue between two or more people or parties intended to reach a beneficial outcome over one or more issues where a conflict exists with respect to at least one of these issues. Thus, negotiation is a process of combining divergent positions into a joint agreement under a decision rule of unanimity.

It is aimed to resolve points of difference, to gain advantage for an individual or collective, or to craft outcomes to satisfy various interests. It is often conducted by putting forward a position and making concessions to achieve an agreement. The degree to which the negotiating parties trust each other to implement the negotiated solution is a major factor in determining whether negotiations are successful.

People negotiate daily, often without considering it a negotiation. Negotiation occurs in organizations, including businesses, non-profits, and within and between governments as well as in sales and legal proceedings, and in personal situations such as marriage, divorce, parenting, etc. Professional negotiators are often specialized, such as union negotiators, leverage buyout negotiators, peace negotiator, or hostage negotiators. They may also work under other titles, such as diplomats, legislators, or brokers.

Distributive negotiation

Distributive negotiation is also sometimes called positional or hard-bargaining negotiation and attempts to distribute a "fixed pie" of benefits. Distributive negotiation operates under zero-sum conditions and implies that any gain one party makes is at the expense of the other and vice versa. For this reason, distributive negotiation is also sometimes called win-lose because of the assumption that one person's gain is another person's loss. Distributive negotiation examples include haggling prices on an open market, including the negotiation of the price of a car or a home.

In a distributive negotiation, each side often adopts an extreme or fixed position, knowing it will not be accepted—and then seeks to cede as little as possible before reaching a deal. Distributive bargainers conceive of negotiation as a process of distributing a fixed amount of value. A distributive negotiation often involves people who have never had a previous interactive relationship, nor are they likely to do so again in the near future, although all negotiations usually have a distributive element.

Integrative negotiation

ntegrative negotiation is also called interest-based, merit-based, or principled negotiation. It is a set of techniques that attempts to improve the quality and likelihood of negotiated agreement by taking advantage of the fact that different parties often value various outcomes differently. While distributive negotiation assumes there is a fixed amount of value (a "fixed pie") to be divided between the parties, integrative negotiation attempts to create value in the course of the negotiation ("expand the pie") by either "compensating" loss of one item with gains from another ("trade-offs" or logrolling), or by constructing or reframing the issues of the conflict in such a way that both parties benefit ("win-win" negotiation).

However, even integrative negotiation is likely to have some distributive elements, especially when the different parties both value different items to the same degree or when details are left to be allocated at the end of the negotiation. While concession is mandatory for negotiations, research shows that people who concede more quickly, are less likely to explore all integrative and mutually beneficial solutions. Therefore, early conceding reduces the chance of an integrative negotiation.

Stages in the Negotiation Process

However, negotiators need not sacrifice effective negotiation in favor of a positive relationship between parties. Rather than conceding, each side can appreciate that the other has emotions and motivations of their own and use this to their advantage in discussing the issue. In fact, perspective-taking can help move parties toward a more integrative solution. Fisher et al. illustrate a few techniques that effectively improve perspective-taking in their book Getting to Yes, and through the following, negotiators can separate people from the problem itself.

• Put yourself in their shoes
• Discuss each other's perceptions
• Find opportunities to act inconsistently with his or her views .
• Face-saving
• Active listening
• Speak for a purpose