On August 2, 2004, Barbara Cox Anthony and Ann Cox Chambers, two sisters who together owned 73% of Cox Communications, announced that they wanted to cash out the minority shareholders of their company. Their initial offer was $32 per share, or a 14% premium to the preannouncement trading price of approximately $28 per share.
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.
Accountability and Negotiation: An Overview
Based on current research, the following is a summary of the information you need to set up an optimal accountability system for negotiators in your organization.
Negotiating in China: The Importance of Relationship Building
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.
Self-Analysis and Negotiation
“Separate the people from the problem,” advises the best-selling negotiation text Getting to Yes. That’s certainly good counsel when tempers flare and bargaining descends into ego battles, but it’s a mistake to ignore the psychological crosscurrents in negotiation. Unless they are addressed, a deal may never be reached.
Enhancing Your Deal in Business 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.
Improving Negotiation Skills Training
How would you characterize your negotiating style: Are you collaborative, competitive, or compromising? If you have trouble answering that question, you’re probably not alone. That’s because skilled negotiators typically take on all these styles during a negotiation: they listen closely and collaborate to create value, they compete for the biggest slice of the pie, and they make compromises when necessary.
PON co-sponsors negotiation skills training for Israeli and Palestinian students
Thanks to leadership from the Middle East Negotiation Initiative (MENI) of the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, a series of negotiation skills trainings was recently provided to eleventh grade students from Jewish and Arab schools in Israel. These two-day workshops, co-sponsored by the Program on Negotiation and the Amal Network and funded by
A Value-Creating Condition Thwarted
In late 1999, with its stock in free fall, NCS HealthCare, a provider of pharmacy services to long-term care facilities, began “exploring strategic alternatives” – code in the mergers and acquisitions world that NCS’s board wanted to put the company up for sale.
In 2001, Omnicare, a larger provider in the same general industry, offered to buy NCS for $270 million, a number lower than the value of the company’s debt. The deal would have left the company’s stockholders with nothing, and talks broke down when NCS demanded a higher price. In June 2002, Omnicare’s fierce rival Genesis HealthCare came to the table with an offer for NCS. Fearful of having its deal stolen away by Omnicare, which had just beaten Genesis in a bidding contest for another company, Genesis proposed a condition on the deal. It would make an offer only if NCS’s chairman and president, who together held a majority of the voting shares, committed to the Genesis deal and rejected any competing offer from Omnicare. NCS accepted this condition, and the merger was announced on July 28, 2002.
Negotiation Tips: A Value-Creation Checklist
By following these tips in your next negotiation, you’ll improve your chances of meeting everyone’s interests.
Before you sit down at the bargaining table, imagine a wide-range of options and packages, including some that may seem far-fetched.
When talks begin, remember that getting down to business too quickly can stand in the way of building trust.
Emphasize to your counterpart the importance of separating the “inventing” from “deciding,” as Fisher, Ury, and Patton suggest in Getting to Yes.
Don’t worry about adding complexity. Bringing new issues, options, and parties to the negotiation is likely to create value.
Avoid artificial deadlines, though it can be helpful to decide when it’s time to concentrate on the packages you’ve identified.
How to Negotiate When You’re Literally Far Apart
Imagine that you’re the CEO of a sports clothing manufacturer based in Chicago. You recently traveled to Amsterdam, the Netherlands, to meet with a distributor who has a rich and diverse network in the European sports market.
During the business trip, you both express enthusiasm about the possibility of a joint venture and agree to give the potential alliance more thought.
Back home, you learn that one of your competitors has discussed similar plans with the same distributor.
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