Negotiation
“Negotiation is a process in which explicit proposals are put forward for the ostensible purposes of resolving specific disagreements among two or more parties with both conflicting and common interests” (Ikle 1964).2 The heart of this definition is the requirement that the parties involved have both conflicting and common interests.
Employees depend on their jobs to make their living and employers need workers if they are to receive a return on their investment. However, employees want the highest possible wages while employers want to pay the lowest ones possible. Without conflicting interests, there is no dispute to be resolved; without common ones, there is no motivation to resolve the dispute. That is, negotiation is appropriate when parties cannot achieve their aims without one another.Negotiation is a process, but just what and how many phases that process entails varies from one theorist to another. Negotiations can resolve specific disagreements but are unlikely to solve disagreements in belief, as the history of theological disputes demonstrates. Negotiators do not always want to reach agreement, so may engage in “bad faith” or “surface” bargaining only ostensibly aimed at resolving a dispute. To this end, they may use “poison pills,” issues they know that the opponent never will accept such as the Palestinian demand for “right of return” to Israel and tactics such as Boulwarism (Chapter 9). Negotiations are not limited to two-party disputes, although at some point the number of parties can become unmanageable and other methods discussed earlier such as voting, representative government, unions, or hierarchical management may work better.
Power seldom is equal among parties. It comes in many forms. Context is one source of power. For example, we speak of a buyers’ or a sellers’ market, meaning one has an advantage depending on economic conditions.
Knowledge—financial, legal, technical, or the like—often is an important source of negotiating power. Knowledge of precedents or of opponents’ tastes and ambitions can be important. Control of resources—in the form of equipment, money, skilled personnel, supplies and the like—often is an important source of power in negotiation. Authority—the ability to make and keep agreements—is a source of negotiating power that often stems from one’s position in an organization. Personal characteristics such as charisma, integrity, persistence, and ruthlessness are additional sources of power. One of the most important is the alternative a party has to a negotiated settlement: the more attractive it is, the more power that party has to obtain a negotiated one. Finally, negotiators vary from one situation to another in willingness to use their power (Chapter 9).Nine tactics can help level the playing field—or at least change the slope. Negotiators can try to increase power by manipulating its sources. They may be able to bring more knowledge to the table, or to delay the negotiation until relative power has changed, or to send a negotiator with more charisma or charm. They can try to find allies: sellers form cartels, buyers form cooperatives. They can look for or create divisions such as the natural one between marketing and engineering within the opponent’s organization. They can use negotiating tactics well. They can try flattery or beg for mercy. They can present a draft agreement that will shape the situation to advantage. They can volunteer to take meeting minutes, gaining control of the record. They can recognize that the more powerful party often is the busier party, less able to prepare fully or send its best people to deal with a weak opponent. They can improve the bargaining climate by improving the relationship, emphasizing the long-term, or switching from distributive to integrative bargaining (Churchman 1995, Lewicki 1997).
Time affects negotiations. The negotiator with an eminent deadline usually is in the weaker position, particularly if the opponent knows it and can delay progress. Finally, time affects value.
Some investments or products decline with age, while some increase. Knowing which, and at what rate, is of obvious importance. Some situations impose real deadlines that give one side or another real power. For example, farm workers try to negotiate at harvest time when farmers fear losing their entire crop to delays. The importance, and thus the time devoted to each phase of a negotiation vary by culture. For example, relationship-prone Middle Easterners tend to spend more time getting to one another then reach agreement quickly once trust is established. By contrast, businesslike but litigious-prone Americans move relatively quickly through the exploratory phase and spend more time “dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s” in the bargaining phase.Finally, in deciding whether or not to negotiate, it is worth considering the nature of the opponent. Some will negotiate for appearance sake, perhaps to appease constituents but with no intention of reaching an agreement. Mnookin (2010) lists five considerations in deciding whether negotiation is the best strategy for resolving a dispute:
· What tangible and intangible interests are at stake?
· What are the minimum goals for acceptable settlement?
· What are the probable outcomes of alternative strategies?
· What are the costs in time, lost opportunity, money, reputation, secrets disclosed, and precedents set?
· Will the parties actually carry out any agreement reached?
Methods such as stability analysis and expected utility suggested in this book are useful for analyzing questions of this sort, but softer, more intuitive judgments considering the character of the opponent or the history of the relationship and its importance (Chapter 7) also have their place.
Against the automatic, unthinking appeal to negotiate every conflict regardless of the nature of the opponent, Mnookin (2010) advises carefully considering when it is and is not appropriate to negotiate with a “devil.” It commonly is said that Britain and France could have prevented World War II if they had countered Hitler’s 1936 takeover of the Rhineland by force.
This overlooks the Mon-day morning quarterbacking involved, the complete unpreparedness of the French and British militaries, and the popular view at the time that fascist Germany and Italy were admired barriers against the even worse threat of communism (Chapter 5). Taken together, all of these considerations favored appeasement despite Churchill’s lone opposing voice. A more recent case is Mandela’s willingness to negotiate with the apartheid government of South Africa that kept him in prison for so long. He initiated secret negotiations with the government but also led a guerrilla army, commenting, “I did not plan it in a spirit of recklessness nor because I have any love of violence. I planned it as a result of a calm and sober assessment of the political situation…the hard facts were that fifty years of nonviolence had brought the African people nothing but more repressive legislation, and fewer and fewer rights.” Mandela understood the power of violence and like Frederick the Great, or like union leaders who may call for a strike, rejected the simplistic notion that one must either negotiate or fight and did both at the same time.The question of whether to negotiate with the devil arises with respect to regimes such as Iran and North Korea. Mnookin answers, sometimes but not always. He rejects blind eagerness, but argues that it is worthwhile more often than not. He cautions against demonizing opponents and, worse, blaming one’s own side for not being perfect while allowing the opponent to be “human.” Assuming there is fault on all sides and that responsibility should be shared is not always true, and presuming people are all essentially the same underestimates differences created by circumstance, culture, history, and group identity.