On December 28, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed into law a ban on adoptions of Russian children by American citizens. The ban was part of a broader law tailored to retaliate against the United States for passing a recent law intended to punish Russian human rights violators, the New York Times reports. Yet it may … Read More 

“Separate the people from the problem,” advises the best-selling negotiation text Getting to Yes. That’s certainly good counsel when tempers flare and bargaining descends into ego battles, but it’s a mistake to ignore the psychological crosscurrents in negotiation. Unless they are addressed, a deal may never be reached. … Read More 

After attending intensive executive education courses, managers typically return to the office with a sense of excitement about applying their new knowledge – only to find 200 emails and 2 voicemail messages waiting for them. Amid the chaos, the lessons of the past few days are forgotten. The unmet challenge of executive education is the … Read More 

Cognitive biases affect even smart and highly educated negotiators. Unfortunately, awareness of our biases is not enough to prevent their having a negative impact on our next negotiation. … Read More 

Katrin Bennhold, staff writer for the International Herald Tribune, and Paula Gutlove, Professor of Negotiation and Conflict Management Practice at the Simmons College School of Management, will present a talk on Women and Negotiation. … Read More 

Computer giant Dell’s potential $23 billion leveraged buyout could mark the beginning of a new era of sky-high-priced acquisitions, writes Matt Wirz in the Wall Street Journal. … Read More 

Stewart recently interviewed negotiation expert and Program on Negotiation co-founder William Ury to discuss the aftermath of avoiding the fiscal cliff and the rounds of tough negotiations between Democrats and Republicans still to come. … Read More 

You don’t have to be serious to be a serious negotiator. Humor, deftly used, can be a positive factor in promoting agreement.

That’s what Finnish researcher Taina Vuorela confirmed in a comparative study of two real-world transactions. One was an internal meeting of a sales team trying to hammer out a strategy to land a potential … Read More 

Not all contracts are created equal. Some maximize joint through creative trades, while others are barely satisfactory. Strategic wariness causes many people to leave untapped value on the bargaining table. Of course, agreements based on incomplete and distorted information aren’t likely to be efficient. … Read More 

Managers often are surprised to learn that deals don’t need to be written down to be legally binding. As a matter of contract law, all that’s needed is an offer, acceptance, and consideration - legalese for a benefit gained by each side. For many deals, this means that a handshake is sufficient to “bind” the … Read More 

How would you characterize your negotiating style: Are you collaborative, competitive, or compromising? If you have trouble answering that question, you’re probably not alone. That’s because skilled negotiators typically take on all these styles during a negotiation: they listen closely and collaborate to create value, they compete for the biggest slice of the pie, and … Read More 

Sometimes those on opposite sides of a bitter dispute can achieve great gains – if only they can spot the ways in which they are similar.

In 2001, the Metropolitan Intercollegiate Basketball Association (MIBA), an organization of five New York-area colleges best known for staging college basketball’s National Invitation Tournament, filed a lawsuit against the National … Read More