Negotiation is a long-standing art that has developed into a major mode of decision making in all aspects of social, political, and business life. Negotiation may be defined as a process of potentially opportunistic interaction by which two or more parties, with some apparent conflict, seek to do better through jointly decided action than they could otherwise. Negotiation then becomes a structured set of interactions in which parties weigh alternative courses of action, each of which may have different consequences, both for the parties themselves and for others in their social, political, or commercial constituency.
Negotiations do not always lead to decisions or agreements. Other outcomes can include softening or hardening of position, personal understanding between negotiators, and symbolic messages sent to the rest of the stakeholder community.
Distributive And Integrative Negotiation
The two main types of negotiation are distributive and integrative. A distributive negotiation usually involves a single issue in which one person gains at the expense of the other operating under zero-sum conditions. Distributive negotiation involves traditional win-lose thinking. In distributive negotiation, each party has a target point that defines what it would like to achieve. Each also has a resistance point, which marks the lowest outcome that is acceptable. The arc between these two points makes up each one’s aspiration range. As long as some overlap exists between each party’s aspiration ranges, there exists a settlement range in which each one’s aspirations can be met.
Examples of tactics used in distributive negotiation are persuading your opponent of the impossibility of getting to his or her target point and the advisability of accepting a settlement near yours; arguing that your target is fair, whereas your opponent’s is not; and attempting to get your opponent to feel emotionally generous toward you and, thus, accept an outcome close to your target point.
In more conflicts, however, more than one issue is at stake, and each party values the issues differently. The outcomes available are no longer a fixed pie divided among all parties. An agreement can be found that is better for both parties than what they would have reached through distributive negotiation. This situation calls for integrative negotiation, which involves a progressive win-win strategy.
Added-Value Negotiation
One practical application of the integrative approach is added-value negotiation, during which the negotiating parties cooperatively develop multiple deal packages while building a productive long-term relationship. It consists of five steps:
- Clarify interest, with each party identifying each tangible and intangible need. The two parties discuss their respective needs and find common ground for negotiation.
- Identify options, which involves creating a marketplace of value when the parties discuss desired elements of value.
- Design alternative deal packages. Each party mixes and matches elements of value from both parties in workable combinations.
- Select a deal. The parties jointly discuss and select feasible deal packages with a spirit of creative agreement.
- Perfect the deal. The parties discuss unresolved issues and build relationships for future negotiations.
Strategies For Dealing With Conflict
Individuals in organizations adopt various strategies to deal with conflict, such as:
- Avoidance—based on the assumption that conflict can be handled by avoiding it. Opposing views cannot be heard unless apparatus for their expression exists. There is always the danger, however, that a conflict will be harder to deal with when it does erupt.
- Smoothing—based on the effort to resolve conflict by putting the emphasis on the value of teamwork; the assurance that “we all agree, really”; and an overt, honest attempt to get past the divergence of opinion.
- Forcing—the opposite of smoothing. A party attacks expressions of dissent and deals with conflict by stamping it out.
- Compromise—in which divergence of views is acknowledged and confronted. One possibility is to split the difference. The major drawback of this strategy is that both parties fail to win.
- Confrontation—involves accepting the conflict of opinions or interests, exploring the scale and nature of the conflict, and then working toward an accommodation of the differences that will provide a greater degree of satisfaction of the objectives of both parties than can be achieved by simple compromise. This strategy may be the most productive one in many cases; it offers the opportunity for both parties to win.
Among other things, the benefits of having conflict out in the open appear to derive from (a) full exploration of the issues that the negotiation is intended to address; (b) identification of parties’ real concerns (information that is needed if integrative solutions are to be developed later); (c) consideration of more options; (d) a lack of false optimism; and (e) enhanced feelings of empowerment and procedural justice.
The Five Steps of Negotiation
The process of negotiation can be viewed as being made up of five steps:
- Preparation and planning. Before the start of the negotiation, both parties need to do their homework. What are the nature of the conflict and the history leading up to this negotiation? Who is involved? What do the parties want from the negotiation, and what are their goals? Each party’s assessment of the other party’s goals is very useful, because each party can anticipate its opponent’s position and therefore is better equipped to counter the opponent’s arguments with the information that supports its own position. When this type of information is gathered, it should be used for the development of a strategy.
As part of the strategy, each party needs to determine both parties’ Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement (BATNA). The BATNA determines the lowest value acceptable by the party for a negotiated agreement. Any offer the party receives that is higher than its BATNA is better than an impasse. Conversely, each party should not expect success in the negotiation effort unless it is able to make the other party an offer it finds more attractive than its BATNA.
- Definition of ground rules. When the development of the strategy is complete, each party should define the ground rules and procedures with the other party over the negotiation itself. Who will do the negotiating? Where will it take place? When will it take place, and what time constraints, if any, will apply? To what issues will the negotiation be limited?
- Clarification and justification. When initial positions have been exchanged, both parties will explain, amplify, clarify, and justify their demands. This exchange provides each party an opportunity for educating and informing the other on the issues, why they are important, and how the party arrived at its initial demands.
- Bargaining and problem-solving. The essence of the negotiation process is the actual bargaining in trying to reach an agreement.
- Closure and implementation. The final step in the negotiation process is formalizing the agreement and developing any procedures that are necessary for implementation and monitoring.
Negotiating Styles
One obvious method for achieving an integrative solution is to suggest that this solution will be a product of the personalities or management style of the individuals involved in negotiation. Along these lines, a range of individual differences have been used as a basis for predicting which style a particular negotiator’s behavior will fall into. Most notably, one scholar distinguished among four types of motivational orientation toward a particular conflict: individualistic, altruistic, competitive, and cooperative. These orientations differ in the degree to which individuals are assumed to show concern for their own and others’ outcomes. Individualists are assumed to be concerned primarily with maximizing their own gain with no regard to others, altruists with maximizing others’ gain with no regard to themselves, competitors with maximizing their own gain at the expense of others, and cooperators with maximizing their own gain as well as that of others. Accordingly, individuals with a cooperative orientation are viewed as holding the key to the discovery of integrative solutions, provided that their opponents also have the same orientation.
Along very similar lines, other scholars developed a dual-concern model that differentiates among individuals on the basis of their conflict style. This style is viewed as being the product of two independent personality variables: concern for self and concern for others. Concern for neither the self nor for others is associated with inaction, concern for others but not the self with concession making, concern for self but not others with contending, and concern for both the self and others with problem-solving.
Third-Party Negotiations
Occasionally, individuals or group representatives reach a statement and are unable to resolve their differences through direct negotiations. In such cases, they may turn to a third party to help them find a solution. Four basic third-party roles exist:
- A mediator is a neutral third party who facilitates a negotiated solution by using reasoning and persuasion, suggesting alternatives, and the like. Mediation is effective when the conflicting parties are motivated to bargain and resolve their conflict, when conflict intensity is not too high, and when the mediator is perceived as being neutral and noncoercive.
- An arbitrator is a third party with the authority to dictate an agreement. Arbitration can be voluntary or compulsory. The big advantage of arbitration is that it always results in a settlement.
- A conciliator is a trusted third party who provides an informal communication link between the negotiator and the opponent. In practice, conciliators typically act as more than mere communication conduits. They also engage in fact-finding, interpreting messages, and persuading disputants to develop agreements.
- A consultant is a skilled and impartial third party who attempts to facilitate problem solving through communication and analysis. The consultant’s role is not to settle the issues but to improve relations between the conflicting parties so that they can reach a settlement themselves. This approach has a longer-term focus, as it tries to build new and positive perceptions and attitudes between the conflicting parties.
Cross-Cultural Issues In Negotiation
Researchers generally agree that significant cross-cultural differences occur in several negotiation behaviors. Some scholars categorize these differences as follows:
- Persuasion styles, such as rational argument (North Americans) or affective, based on feelings (Arabs)
- Confrontation versus avoidance, such as confrontation in France and the United States, and avoidance in Japan
- Initial positions, which are extreme for Russians, Arabs, Chinese, and Japanese, and moderate for North Americans
- Concession patterns, in which some cultures are reluctant to make concessions (Russians) compared with those that are likely to do so (Norwegians, North Americans, Arabs, and Malays)
- Nonverbal behavior, such as silence (used most by the Japanese and least by Brazilians) and touching (used most by Brazilians and least by the Japanese)
These extensive and significant differences in negotiation behavior create cultural barriers that can make cross-cultural negotiation very difficult. Thus, negotiators who are unfamiliar with these barriers are likely to leave the bargaining table confused and frustrated, and escalation of conflict may follow. Negotiators, therefore, must be trained in cross-cultural negotiation to reduce the impact of barriers, such as prejudice, stereotypes, misunderstanding, and communication breakdown.
Bibliography:
- Jacob Bercovitch and Scott Sigmund Gartner, International Conflict Mediation: New Approaches and Findings (Routledge, 2009);
- Barbara A. Budjac Corvette, Conflict Management: A Practical Guide to Developing Negotiation Strategies (Pearson Prentice Hall, 2007);
- Tricia S. Jones and Ross Brinkert, Conflict Coaching: Conflict Management Strategies and Skills for the Individual (Sage, 2008);
- M. Kolb and J. Williams, The Shadow Negotiation (Simon & Schuster, 2000);
- A. Lax and J. K. Sebenius, The Manager as Negotiator (Free Press, 1986);
- Lewicki, Decision-Making in Conflict Situations (National Institute for Dispute Resolution, 1985);
- William Hernández Requejo and John L. Graham, Global Negotiation: The New Rules (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008);
- Christina Schneider, Conflict, Negotiation and European Union Enlargement (Cambridge University Press, 2008);
- Alice F. Stuhlmacher and Melissa G. Morrissett, “Men and Women as Mediators: Disputant Perceptions,” International Journal of Conflict (v.19/3, 2008);
- Lynn M. Wagner, Problem-Solving and Bargaining in International Negotiations (Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2008).
This example Negotiation And Negotiating Styles Essay is published for educational and informational purposes only. If you need a custom essay or research paper on this topic please use our writing services. EssayEmpire.com offers reliable custom essay writing services that can help you to receive high grades and impress your professors with the quality of each essay or research paper you hand in.
See also:
ORDER HIGH QUALITY CUSTOM PAPER
Always on-time
Plagiarism-Free
100% Confidentiality
Special offer!
