Recent delays at a manufacturing company have cut deeply into company profits. The management appoints a multi-departmental team to come up with a way of speeding up the launch of new products. A vice president of manufacturing is put in charge of overseeing the effort and is encouraged to use consensus building techniques to take … Read More 

Does negotiation have a place in crisis management? Many public relations experts would argue no. When a company is confronted with negative publicity, they are advised to reveal as little as possible and denounce their attackers claim. This advice ignores the fact that what an angry public wants is to be heard.

After stranding thousands of … Read More 

In his book How to Negotiate with Kids…Even When You Think You Shouldn’t (Viking, 2003), Scott Brown, a co-founder of the Harvard Negotiation Project at Harvard Law School, outlines a framework for dealing with your children using the principles of negotiation.

He identifies six principles of “persuasive parenting” that will allow you and your child to … Read More 

Negotiating with your children may seem counterintuitive but parents can build stronger relationships with them by implementing a problem-solving approach when trying to resolve family conflicts.

In his book How to Negotiate with Kids…Even When You Think You Shouldn’t (Viking, 2003), Scott Brown, a founder of the Harvard Negotiation Project at Harvard Law School, outlines a … Read More 

In 2000, Coca-Cola Enterprises (CCE), seeing the surge in employee grievances and litigation in other companies, implemented a revolutionary dispute system they called SOLUTIONS to deal with its own internal disputes.

Dispute Systems Design, or DSD, is the process of identifying, creating, implementing, and evaluating an effective means of resolving conflicts within an organization.

CCE’s program consists … Read More 

Dispute System Design (DSD) is the process of identifying, designing, employing, and evaluating an effective means of resolving conflicts within an organization. In order to be effective, dispute systems must be thoroughly thought out and carefully constructed.
In their article in the March 2005 Negotiation newsletter, “Early Intervention: How to Minimize the Cost of Conflict,” … Read More 

Suppose you have been recently hired as the first full time staff member charged with handling employee relations. You are entering a large accounting firm with an unusually high staff turnover rate and several recent defections by company accounts.

Dispute System Design (DSD) is the process of identifying, designing, employing, and evaluating an effective means of … Read More 

Even when parties at the negotiating table have the same interests, they may disagree on the amount of risk they are willing to take. … Read More 

Individuals in this position often feel as though they have few if any options. In his February 2006 article in Negotiation newsletter, “Negotiating with a 900-Pound Gorilla,” MIT Professor Lawrence Susskind offers strategies for how negotiators in a weak position should deal with a seemingly all-powerful opponent. … Read More 

What’s the right number of options to put forward in financial negotiations? In their April 2005 article in the Negotiation newsletter, “Putting More on the Table: How Making Multiple Offers Can Increase the Final Value of the Deal,” Northwestern professors Victoria Husted Medvec and Adam D. Galinsky write that issuing three equivalent offers simultaneously can … Read More 

What do we do when we’re uncertain about how to behave in business negotiations? We study the behavior of others in similar situations.

When we look for social proof regarding the “right” way to behave, we tend to make quicker, more efficient decisions, writes psychologist Robert Cialdini of Arizona State University. … Read More 

In financial negotiations, it’s always better when someone accepts your offer rather than rejecting it, right? Actually, rejection can sometimes be the most effective way to get to “yes.”

Here’s a story about consumer behavior in financial negotiations, as described by Itamar Simonson of Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and the late Amos Tversky in a … Read More