The following items are tagged mutual gains.
When preparing to negotiate, always take time to consider these important questions:
What’s my BATNA – my walkaway option if the deal fails?
What are my most important interests, in ranked order?
What is the other side’s BATNA, and what are his interests?
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 Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). MIBA allege that certain NCAA rules governing team participation in preseason and postseason tournaments restricted school’s participation in MIBA tournaments, in violation of various antitrust laws. After four years of litigation, the two parties announced not only that they would settle a lawsuit but also that the NCAA would purchase the rights to the MIBA preseason and postseason tournaments.
Does negotiation research promote the creation of joint gain at the expense of relationship building? Jared R. Curhan, Margaret A. Neale, and Lee D. Ross suggest the field is guilty as charged.
To illustrate, the researchers apply author O. Henry’s classic tale “The Gift of the Magi” to negotiation. The short story describes a poor but loving husband and wife who want to give each other the perfect Christmas gift. Della sells her beautiful long hair to buy Jim a platinum chain for his prize possession, a gold watch. Meanwhile, Jim sells his watch to buy a set of tortoise shell hair combs for his wife’s hair.
Parties in litigation are often overly optimistic about their chances of winning in court. This tendency reduces the bargaining range for settlement because one or both parties perceive their walkaway alternative (namely, letting the courts decide) to be more attractive than it actually is. According to conventional wisdom, lawyers can help their clients overcome this overoptimism bias by providing an objective assessment of a case’s merits and encourage acceptance of a deal.
According to conventional wisdom, small talk builds rapport and gets both sides a better deal in the end. But in fact, the question of whether to engage in small talk can be highly context-specific. New York City investment bankers, for example, tend to be far less likely than Texas oil executives to engage in small talk at the outset of a negotiation.
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