Negotiation And Negotiating Styles Essay

Cheap Custom Writing Service

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:

  1. Clarify interest, with each party identifying each tangible and intangible  need.  The two parties discuss their respective needs and find common ground for negotiation.
  2. Identify options, which   involves  creating   a marketplace  of value when the  parties  discuss desired elements of value.
  3. Design alternative deal  packages.  Each  party mixes and matches elements of value from both parties in workable combinations.
  4. Select a deal. The  parties  jointly  discuss  and select feasible deal packages with a spirit of creative agreement.
  5. 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:   

  1. Jacob Bercovitch and Scott Sigmund Gartner, International Conflict Mediation: New Approaches and Findings (Routledge, 2009);
  2. Barbara A. Budjac Corvette, Conflict Management:  A  Practical Guide  to  Developing Negotiation Strategies (Pearson  Prentice  Hall, 2007);
  3. Tricia S. Jones and Ross Brinkert, Conflict Coaching: Conflict Management Strategies and Skills for the Individual  (Sage, 2008);
  4. M. Kolb and J. Williams, The Shadow Negotiation (Simon & Schuster, 2000);
  5. A. Lax and J. K. Sebenius, The Manager as Negotiator (Free Press, 1986);
  6. Lewicki, Decision-Making in  Conflict  Situations  (National  Institute  for  Dispute  Resolution,  1985);
  7. William Hernández Requejo and John L. Graham, Global Negotiation: The New Rules (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008);
  8. Christina Schneider, Conflict, Negotiation and European Union Enlargement (Cambridge University Press, 2008);
  9. Alice F. Stuhlmacher and Melissa G. Morrissett, “Men and Women  as Mediators: Disputant  Perceptions,” International Journal of Conflict (v.19/3, 2008);
  10. 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!

GET 10% OFF WITH 24START DISCOUNT CODE