contracts

A contract is an agreement having a lawful object entered into voluntarily by two or more parties, each of whom intends to create one or more legal obligations between them. The elements of a contract are “offer” and “acceptance” by “competent persons” having legal capacity who exchange “consideration” to create “mutuality of obligation.”

The following items are tagged contracts.

Nantucket’s Never-Ending Negotiations: Harvard Negotiation and Mediation Clinical Program (HNMCP) Students Shape How Town and Unions Work Together

Posted by & filed under Negotiation Skills.

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 University, Mr. Barber knew relations between the Town of Nantucket’s management and his union could be better. Since the firefighters’ contracts only lasted two or three years and the negotiation process itself often took that long, the union and the management sat down for contract negotiations every year. And every year, the negotiations spilled over into the next year or, if it was the final year of the contract, went to arbitration. This impacted everyone: arbitration provoked more fighting, poorer relations, and less of what everyone wanted. They hadn’t had a mutual agreement for six years. As one of the interested parties, though, Mr. Barber knew he was not the person to fix a broken bargaining system.

Bring Long-Term Concerns to the Bargaining Table

Posted by & filed under Dealmaking.

It can be difficult to keep future concerns at the forefront of your company’s most important decisions. Fortunatly, research on intergenerational conflict has uncovered best practices for ensuring that you and your employees take the long view.

Win-Win Negotiations: Managing Your Counterpart’s Satisfaction

Posted by & filed under Sales Negotiations.

As the following points will demonstrate, ensuring that your counterpart is satisfied with a particular deal requires you to manage several aspects of the negotiation process, including his outcome expectations, his perceptions of your outcome, the comparisons he makes with others, and his overall negotiation experience itself.

Prospering in a Multiparty Trade Zone

Posted by & filed under Business Negotiations.

With thorough preparation, the help of a trained mediator, and useful reports from subgroups, participants in a multiparty negotiation should be able to find their way to the trading zone. Once they’ve arrived, the next step is to work together to ensure that everyone’s interests are met.

Issuing a Draft in Negotiations: Risks and Pitfalls

Posted by & filed under Business Negotiations.

A draft agreement may allow you to control the early stages of talks, but be aware that it also can obstruct agreement in the long run.

Putting a draft on the table may lock parties into bargaining positions prematurely, interfering with a search for common interests and creative options.

Taking Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) Too Far

Posted by & filed under Mediation.

More and more companies are inserting alternative dispute resolution (ADR) clauses in their contracts with customers and vendors, and even in agreements with their own employees. ADR processes such as mediation and arbitration can be beneficial for all concerned if they help avoid the cost, delay, and uncertainty of going to court. Mediation, in particular, may offer creative solutions, protection of confidentiality, and preservation of important relationships.

Negotiating in China: The Importance of Relationship Building

Posted by & filed under International Negotiation.

Although most Americans treat those they know better than they treat strangers, Chinese behavior towards insiders and outsiders tends to be more extreme than in the United States. A guiding principle in Chinese society is guanxi – personal relationships with people from whom one can expect (and who expect in return) special favors and services. Family ties are paramount, but friends, fellow students, and neighbors can also join the inner circle. As a foreigner, you can cultivate guanxi either by hiring people with close ties to your counterpart or by developing your own relationships with key contacts.

Enhancing Your Deal in Business Negotiations

Posted by & filed under Sales Negotiations.

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.

The Pitfalls of Faulty Contracts

Posted by & filed under Sales Negotiations.

Some of the trickier aspects of designing the right contract with your agent include properly aligning her incentives and monitoring her work. Supervising your agent can be especially hard when she knows more than you do about the area of work. For example, hiring an agent who’s a lawyer and paying her on an hourly basis may induce her to spend more time than you think you necessary – at your expense. She might become a literary perfectionist, spending hours crafting and polishing an offer letter to the other side when, as far as you’re concerned, the second draft would have done just fine. To prevent her from running up needless hours, you might opt instead for a fixed-fee engagement. Then, however, she may cut corners, doing just enough to reach her fee.