value

Economic or noneconomic aspects of the process or outcome of a negotiation about which one or more parties care strongly. Value could mean cash, property, relationships, reputation, fairness, or a partyÕs self-image. (David A. Lax and James K. Sebenius, 3-D Negotiation [Harvard Business School Press, 2006], 17)

The following items are tagged value.

What to Do Before the Deal Breaks Down

Posted by & filed under Dealmaking.

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 delinquent debtor when the prospect of future business with the debtor is likely. Bondholders of the same debtor, on the other hand, will generally be more resistant to renegotiation, as they tend to lack opportunities for a profitable future business relationship.

Beyond the Bottom Line

Posted by & filed under Negotiation Skills.

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 professionals, the researchers developed a Subjective Value Inventory (SVI) that includes four factors.

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.

How Nervous Energy Affects Negotiation and Conflict Management

Posted by & filed under Conflict Management.

Negotiation is often characterized as a physiologically arousing event marked by pounding hearts, queasy stomachs, and flushed faces. We might assume that heightened physiological arousal would mar our negotiation performance, but this is only true for some, researchers Ashley D. Brown and Jared R. Curhan of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found in a new study soon to be published in the journal Psychological Science.

When Negotiation is Your BATNA: The US Engages on Syria

Posted by & filed under BATNA.

The United States and Russia have announced plans to hold a peace conference aimed at ending the civil war in Syria, which has killed more than 70,000 people.

In an op-ed in the New York Times this May, Christopher R. Hill, the dean of the Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver and a former U.S. ambassador, argues that the Obama administration’s decision to engage Russia on the Syrian conflict is both long overdue and insufficient.

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.

Trust in Negotiations

Posted by & filed under Sales Negotiations.

Trust may develop naturally over time, but negotiators rarely have the luxury of letting nature take its course. Thus it sometimes seems easiest to play it safe with cautious deals involving few tradeoffs, few concessions, and little information sharing between parties. But avoiding risk can mean missing out on significant opportunities. For this reason, fostering trust on the fly is a critical skill for managers. As Kristen knew, the first step to inspiring trust is to demonstrate trustworthiness. All negotiators can apply the six strategies that follow to influence others’ perceptions of their trustworthiness at the bargaining table.

Negotiate Conditions – And Bring Value to the Deal

Posted by & filed under Dealmaking.

Like a contingency, a condition to a deal is a related though far less common deal-structuring technique. A condition is an ‘if’ statement like a contingency, but, whereas a contingency depends on unknown future events, a condition is entirely within the control of the parties involved.