If your current negotiation reaches an impasse, what’s your best outside option? Most seasoned negotiators understand the value of evaluating their BATNA, or best alternative to a negotiated agreement, a concept that Roger Fisher, William Ury, and Bruce Patton introduced in their seminal book, Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In (Penguin, 1991, second … Read Take your BATNA to the Next Level 
If you’ve ever tried negotiating with kids, you know that you don’t always feel like you have the upper hand. One expert weighs in. … Read More
In the summer of 2016, Illinois became the only U.S. state in the past 80 years to go an entire year without a full operating budget, according to Reuters. It reached that dubious milestone thanks to an epic negotiation impasse between Republican governor Bruce Rauner and the Democratic-controlled state legislature. The story of the negotiation … Read Will You Avoid a Negotiation Impasse?
AI mediation is on the rise, with chatbots increasingly assisting human mediators in resolving disputes. Here’s what AI mediation is capable of—and where it falls short. … Read AI Mediation: Using AI to Help Mediate Disputes
So, you’ve offered what you think is a great deal, but your counterpart doesn’t seem to agree. What’s the problem? The offer may be excellent—it’s how you’ve approached framing in negotiation that’s holding you back. … Read Framing in Negotiation
The ladder of inference describes how a negotiator, or any decision maker, relies upon her personal knowledge, or observable data, up the ladder of inference to the next stage, which is selected data. … Read The Ladder of Inference: A Resource List
When it comes to conflict resolution, surprisingly useful nuggets of advice come from the realm of international conflict. Take the Camp David Accords of 1978, as described minute-by-minute by Lawrence Wright in his new book, Thirteen Days in September. U.S. President Jimmy Carter made history by negotiating a peaceful end to the conflict between Israel … Read More
When two groups are embroiled in a conflict, it is common for the party with less power to have difficulty convincing the more powerful party to sit down at the negotiating table in international negotiations. In such cases, the more powerful player is likely to resist the notion of shaking up the status quo—and thus … Read More
In multiparty negotiations, encouraging key stakeholders to communicate their interests is the key to success. Brandeis University professor Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld explains how to do so. … Read More
In 2022, auditing firm Ernst & Young (now EY) agreed to pay a $100 million penalty imposed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission after a significant number of its audit professionals were caught cheating on their CPA exams. Two years later, the Netherlands division of one of the other “Big Four” U.S. auditing firms, … Read More
An exploding offer is one with a time limit, which you’ll often find in the job market as employers are looking to hire quickly and may also not want to be your second choice while you wait for another offer to come in first. Katherine Shonk answers the begging question about what to do when … Read More
What’s your BATNA strategy for your next important negotiation? Here are six ways to use your best alternative to a negotiated agreement to your advantage. … Read BATNA Strategy: Should You Reveal Your BATNA?
