On May 19, Internet company Yahoo announced that it was purchasing the blogging service Tumblr for about $1.1 billion in cash. The acquisition could put a fresh face on the aging Internet company and provide it with a profitable revenue source—or it could turn out to be another instance of the Web pioneer overpaying for … Read More 

Our DEAL approach allows you to respond to threats without conveying weakness or escalating the conflict, redirecting talks toward a focus on each other’s interests. … Read More 

The likelihood that a provision for final-offer arbitration in the event of impasse will actually result in arbitration is slim. However, as a precaution, you and your counterpart should agree on an arbitrator before you start negotiating. It’s easier to choose an arbitrator when both sides view arbitration as an unlikely event when arbitration is … Read More 

Given the prevalence of corporate scandals in recent years, many have questioned whether ethics training for professionals has done much good.

One of the reasons that such training has achieved limited success is its focus on intentional, explicitly unethical behavior. Such training encourages students to do what is right rather than what is profitable. Yet, most … Read More 

According to Dacher Keltner of the University of California at Berkeley and his colleagues , power affects two primary neurological regulators of behavior: the behavioral approach system and the behavioral inhibition system. Powerful individuals demonstrate “approach related” behaviors such as expressing positive moods and searching for rewards in their environment. … Read More 

There are three major reasons that managers are reluctant to seek the assistance they need. … Read More 

On Saturday, April 20, 2013, the Program on Negotiation co-hosted a conference on “Confronting Evil: Interdisciplinary Perspectives,” in partnership with the Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard University and the Volkswagen Foundation. … Read More 

Whenever one side fails to meet its contractual obligations, renegotiation is more likely to succeed if the parties have a strong relationship. Ideally, the aggrieved party will value long-term relations more than potential gains from a claim for breach of contract. For example, a bank will be more willing to renegotiate a loan with a … Read More 

Like other cognitive biases, competitive expectations can be insidious. Fortunately, there are several steps you can take to forestall their negative consequences. … Read More 

Traditionally, the arbitrator is not limited to selecting one of the parties’ contract proposals but may determine the contract terms on his own. If negotiators know that impasse will lead to traditional arbitration, they typically assume that the arbitrator will reach a decision that’s an approximate midpoint between their final offers. … Read More 

What do people value when they negotiate?

Research by Professors Jared R. Curhan and Heng Xu of MIT’s Sloan School of Management and Hillary Anger Elfenbein of Berkeley’s Haas School of Business provides useful insights concerning this basica question.

Using survey data collected from everyday negotiators and filtering it through a sorting procedure conducted by negotiation … Read More 

Preparation. Practice. Persistence. Those qualities make for a good firefighter, and as Nantucket Firefighter Nate Barber learned from working with Harvard Negotiation and Mediation Clinical Program (HNMCP) students, they also make for a good negotiator.

As a member of Nantucket’s Local 2509 of the International Association of Firefighters and a former undergraduate negotiation student at Boston … Read More