Teaching Negotiation

Teaching negotiation includes instructional areas such as deal setup and design, dispute resolution systems, arbitration, mediation, and meeting facilitation as well as the use of interactive role-play exercises, books, videos, training materials and role-play simulations designed around a specific negotiation skill or concept. The Program on Negotiation’s educational resource center, known as the Teaching Negotiation Resource Center (TNRC), develops a wide-range of role-play simulations—including the popular Sally Soprano negotiation case study—interactive teaching exercises, books, videos, and scholarly papers devoted to the application of teaching negotiation and training effective negotiators.

Materials in the TNRC cover negotiation-related issues in areas ranging from climate change to ethics. Many of the themes are substantive (e.g., environmental negotiations or business negotiations), some target specific sectors (e.g., health care industry), or address particular contexts (e.g., cross-cultural negotiation skills) while others are more process oriented (e.g., facilitation).

The most popular simulation topics include:

  • Environmental
  • Real Estate
  • Workplace
  • Public Policy
  • Teaching in Law
  • Water Management Simulations

In addition, once a year, the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School selects an outstanding individual who embodies what it means to be a truly great negotiator. To earn the Great Negotiator Award, the honoree must be a distinguished leader whose lifelong accomplishments in the field of dispute resolution and negotiation have had compelling and lasting results.

To help students and professionals learn valuable lessons from these highly skilled negotiators, PON’s Great Negotiator Case Study Series features in-depth studies such as Stuart Eizenstat: Negotiating the Final Accounts of World War II and Lakhdar Brahimi: Negotiating a New Government for Afghanistan.

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Teaching Negotiation: The Art of Case Study Writing

PON Staff   •  09/26/2017   •  Filed in Teaching Negotiation

Jim Sebenius, the Gordon Donaldson Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, and Director of the Harvard Negotiation Project, addressed these questions in his presentation at the NP@PON Faculty Dinner Seminar on October 7, 2010. His article, “Developing Negotiation Case Studies,” began as a memo to a novice case writer about how to write … Learn More About This Program

Bullard Houses Role-Play Simulation Helps Researchers Explore Gender Inequality

PON Staff   •  09/11/2017   •  Filed in Teaching Negotiation

role play simulation

In a recent Slate.com article, writer and PhD in Psychology Jane Hu described the findings of a research study by Professor Laura J. Kray, University of California, Berkeley.

Kray, along with co-authors Jessica Kennedy, PhD, and Alex Van Zant, PhD, investigated the role gender played in negotiation and focused specifically on whether the stereotype of women … Learn More About This Program

Teach Your Students Spoiler Management in Negotiations

Lara SanPietro   •  08/02/2017   •  Filed in Teaching Negotiation

spoilers

What can you do to protect a negotiation from spoilers?
The greatest risk to a negotiation can come from parties at the table who are intent on spoiling the agreement. Spoilers are parties in a negotiation who believe that the agreement will threaten their power and interests, and so they spoil the negotiation.

Some spoilers have limited … Learn More About This Program

Revolutionize How You Teach TNRC Negotiation Exercises and Role-Plays

Lara SanPietro   •  06/05/2017   •  Filed in Teaching Negotiation

You’ve told us that using technology in your teaching is important so we spent some time evaluating various platforms and software that help negotiation teachers and trainers to utilize the power of role-plays in their classes. The team at iDecisionGames has created a web-based platform that offers many benefits and opportunities to transform how you … Learn More About This Program

Negotiation Scenario: Hammering out Local Strategies for Managing Climate-related Public Health Risks

Lara SanPietro   •  09/02/2016   •  Filed in Teaching Negotiation

Climate change is already causing increased temperatures, more intense storms, and rising sea levels in many parts of the world. The threats, particularly the impacts on human health, are daunting. Despite uncertainties about the timing and severity of the impacts of climate change in each location, this simulation asserts that cities and towns must take … Learn More About This Program

Conflict Resolution Games: Life, Death, and Career Consequences

Lara SanPietro   •  07/29/2016   •  Filed in Teaching Negotiation

High-Stakes Conflict Resolution Games
In Drug Testing in the Workplace—a popular role-play from the TNRC—a truck driver tests positive for marijuana in a random drug test. To play this conflict resolution game, participants assume the roles of truck driver, personnel director, and a representative from the Employee Assistance
Program Center, and then explore the question:

What is the … Learn More About This Program

Teach “Head and Heart” Negotiation with New Negotiation Game Technology

Lara SanPietro   •  07/22/2016   •  Filed in Teaching Negotiation

Do you teach students how to structure a negotiation process while helping them to develop the emotional acuity necessary for building relationships with counterparts? Professor Linda Kaboolian refers to this as “teaching head and heart negotiation”; an approach that was central to the 10 years she spent teaching simulation-based negotiation at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Kaboolian … Learn More About This Program

World in Crisis! One of the Most Immersive and Rewarding Negotiation Games Ever Created

Lara SanPietro   •  07/08/2016   •  Filed in Teaching Negotiation

This negotiation simulation comprised “the most intense, challenging and educational days of my life” reported one participant. What sort of experience could possibly elicit such a comment? One of the most immersive and rewarding negotiation games ever developed: a 72-party mega-simulation called the Transition Exercise!

The Transition (Excercise Trailer) from MediaTank on Vimeo.

This one-of-a-kind, intensive, multi-party … Learn More About This Program

Case Study: Teaching with a Powerful Negotiated Agreement

Lara SanPietro   •  05/16/2016   •  Filed in Teaching Negotiation

What do a Nobel Peace Prize recipient, the CEO of an international financial advisory firm, and the former United States ambassador to the United Nations have in common? They’ve all received the Great Negotiator Award.
Every year, the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School bestows this prestigious honor on distinguished leaders whose lifelong accomplishments in … Learn More About This Program

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