No one likes to go to court. Not only is it expensive and time-consuming, but it often leads to frustrating results and damaged relationships. So, how does mediation work in a lawsuit and is legal mediation a better route?
… Read How Does Mediation Work in a Lawsuit? 
Learn how to negotiate like a diplomat, think on your feet like an improv performer, and master job offer negotiation like a professional athlete when you download a copy of our FREE special report, Negotiation Skills: Negotiation Strategies and Negotiation Techniques to Help You Become a Better Negotiator, from the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School.
negotiation research
What is Negotiation Research?
Negotiation research covers a broad range of topics, and can help us improve our negotiation outcomes.
Abundant negotiation research suggests that negotiators are better off setting specific, challenging goals rather than vague “I’ll do my best” goals. And while the assumption is that negotiators know what they want, most negotiators enter into talks without a realistic awareness of what outcome will make them happy.
This is just one of the many lessons we can learn through negotiation research. The insights we can obtain from such research are many and varied.
For example, the evidence that a negotiator’s behavior is powerfully influenced by the actions of those who are like her is just one of the implications from social science and negotiation research that can impact a negotiator’s bargaining technique at and away from the negotiation table.
Other research explores the impact vivid mental imagery has on decision-making processes for negotiators, as well as situations that make negotiators susceptible to unethical behavior. The findings of these studies indicate how we might make better choices at the bargaining table and lessen the risk of violating our own ethical standards and being misled by others.
One field of negotiation research on the types of power in negotiation has given us the following negotiation tips and techniques for minimizing the effect gender has on bargaining situations.
- Some degree of ambiguity is present in all negotiations, so be aware of situations that may trigger gender stereotypes or role expectations.
- When sending your employees into competitive bargaining situations, clearly state performance goals. Armed with transparent comparative information and a sense of acceptable targets, both men and women will achieve better outcomes.
To discover more ways in which negotiation research can advance your skills, download our FREE special report, Negotiation Skills: Negotiation Strategies and Negotiation Techniques to Help You Become a Better Negotiator, from the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School.
The following items are tagged negotiation research:
NEW! Harvard Mediation Intensive
Led by mediation experts Audrey Lee and Alain Lempereur, the Harvard Mediation Intensive delves into mediation principles and processes through interactive presentations and hands-on exercises. From employment and business disagreements to public and international conflicts, you will discover effective ways to enable parties to settle their differences across a variety of contexts.
… Read NEW! Harvard Mediation Intensive
Mediation and the Conflict Resolution Process
It’s often the case that when two people or organizations try to resolve a dispute by determining who is right, they get stuck. That’s why so many disputes end up in court. There is a better way to resolve your dispute: by hiring an expert mediator who focuses not on rights but on interests—the needs, … Read Mediation and the Conflict Resolution Process
Semester Negotiation and Dispute Resolution Online
This virtual and highly interactive semester-length seminar explores the ways that people negotiate to create value and resolve disputes. Designed to improve understanding of negotiation theory and build negotiation skills, the curriculum integrates negotiation research from several academic fields with experiential learning exercises. In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, all sessions will be delivered live.
… Read More
Managing Cultural Differences in Negotiation
It’s important to educate yourself about your counterpart’s culture so that you don’t risk offending her or seeming unprepared. At the same time, it would be a mistake to focus too narrowly when preparing for cross-cultural communication in business. Research on international negotiation can help us think more broadly when it comes to managing cultural … Read Managing Cultural Differences in Negotiation
Distributive Bargaining Strategies
Wise negotiators recognize the value of both collaborating and competing at the bargaining table. They look for ways to increase the pie of value for all parties, often by identifying differences across issues and making tradeoffs. And they also rely on distributive bargaining strategies to try to claim as much of that larger pie for … Read Distributive Bargaining Strategies
MESO Negotiation: The Benefits of Making Multiple Equivalent Simultaneous Offers in Business Negotiations
In MESO, negotiation in which multiple offers are presented simultaneously at the negotiation table, effective negotiators seek opportunities to create value. By making tradeoffs across issues, parties can obtain greater value on the issues that are most important to them.
… Read More
How to Control Your Emotions in Conflict Resolution
To guard against acting irrationally or in ways that can harm you, authors of Beyond Reason: Using Emotions As You Negotiate Roger Fisher and Daniel Shapiro advise you to take your emotional temperature during a negotiation. Specifically, try to gauge whether your emotions are manageable, starting to heat up, or threatening to boil over.
… Read More
The Star Wars Negotiations and Trust at the Negotiation Table
What is negotiation in business? Negotiation research has identified it as a process of building trust and negotiation tactics for building trust at the bargaining table have proven effective in helping negotiators create, and claim, more value out of dealmaking scenarios.
… Read More
Cultural Barriers and Conflict Negotiation Strategies: Apple’s Apology in China
When dealing with a difficult counterpart, it helps to take a conciliatory approach to the bargaining table. While apologies necessarily involve moments of vulnerability, they can also open doors to value creation and strengthen the relationship you have with your bargaining counterpart. Let’s look back at Apple’s apology in China for its maligned warranty policies … Read More
Advanced Negotiation Strategies and Concepts: Hostage Negotiation Tips for Business Negotiators
Upset by a delay in the delivery of one of your products, a longtime buyer threatens to turn to the media unless you meet his extreme demands. Not only is the relationship in jeopardy, but your company’s reputation seems to be as well. What should you do? Turn to some tried and true hostage negotiation … Read More
5 Tips for Improving Your Negotiation Skills
The prospect of boosting our negotiation skills can be so overwhelming that we often delay taking the necessary steps we can follow to improve, such as taking time to prepare thoroughly. The following five guidelines will help you break this daunting task into a series of manageable—and often essential—strategies.
… Read 5 Tips for Improving Your Negotiation Skills
Negotiation Advice: When to Make the First Offer in Negotiation
When or when not to make the first offer in negotiations is a question many expert negotiators ask themselves when approaching business negotiations, real estate transactions, or even interpersonal negotiations with friends and family. In this article drawn from negotiation research, we offer negotiating skills and negotiation tips for when, and when not, to make … Read More
Best Negotiators in History: Nelson Mandela and His Negotiation Style
The late Nelson Mandela will certainly be remembered as one of the best negotiators in history. He was clearly “the greatest negotiator of the twentieth century,” wrote Harvard Law School professor and Program on Negotiation Chairman Robert H. Mnookin in his seminal book, Bargaining with the Devil, When to Negotiate, When to Fight.
… Read More
Salary Negotiation: How to Ask for a Higher Salary
For a new employee, salary negotiation skills can be the most important and the most intimidating, but the most important, of difficult conversations to have at the beginning of your career. A new employee, successfully negotiating a salary offer up by $5,000 could make a huge difference over the course of her career.
… Read More
Women and Negotiation: Narrowing the Gender Gap in Negotiation
Men tend to achieve better economic results in negotiation than women, negotiation research studies have found overall. Such gender differences are generally small, but evidence from the business world suggests that they can add up over time.
… Read More
Power in Negotiation: How Effective Negotiators Project Power at the Negotiation Table
Negotiating power generally comes from one of three sources, according to Northwestern University professor Adam D. Galinsky and New York University professor Joe C. Magee.
… Read More
Negotiation Techniques: The First Offer Dilemma in Negotiations
The first offer dilemma in negotiations – should you make the first offer? Few questions related to negotiation techniques and negotiation strategies have yielded more academic attention and debate among practitioners in negotiation research.
… Read More
Power in Negotiation: The Impact on Negotiators and the Negotiation Process
According to Dacher Keltner of the University of California at Berkeley and his colleagues, power in negotiation affects two primary neurological regulators of behavior: the behavioral approach system and the behavioral inhibition system. Powerful negotiators demonstrate “approach related” behaviors such as expressing positive moods and searching for rewards in their environment.
… Read More
What is Anchoring in Negotiation?
Consider this anchoring bias example from Harvard Business School and Harvard Law School faculty member Guhan Subramanian. While running a negotiation simulation in one of his classes, Subramanian noticed that one student spent a considerable amount of time explaining why $10.69 per hour would be an impossible wage rate to offer the student’s counterpart. The … Read What is Anchoring in Negotiation?
Top Ten Posts About Conflict Resolution
Conflict resolution is the process of resolving a dispute or a conflict by meeting at least some of each side’s needs and addressing their interests. Conflict resolution sometimes requires both a power-based and an interest-based approach, such as the simultaneous pursuit of litigation (the use of legal power) and negotiation (attempts to reconcile each party’s … Read Top Ten Posts About Conflict Resolution
Top 10 International Business Negotiation Case Studies
Here is a list offering a broad overview of negotiation case studies from the recent past along with analysis of each bargaining scenario:
… Read More
How Emotions Affect Negotiations
Emotions play a critical but little-understood role in negotiation. Strong emotions such as anger can derail negotiations, yet keeping emotions under wraps can lead to misunderstandings and impasse. Increasingly, researchers are looking more closely at how emotions affect negotiations. The results of two studies offer lessons related to the impact of emotions in negotiation.
… Read How Emotions Affect Negotiations
How to Resolve Cultural Conflict: Overcoming Cultural Barriers at the Negotiation Table
After recently losing an important deal in India, a business negotiator learned that her counterpart felt as if she had been rushing through the talks. The business negotiator thought she was being efficient with their time. In this useful cross-cultural conflict negotiation example, how should this negotiator improve her negotiation skills?
… Read More
Preparation for Negotiation: Get Off on the Right Foot
The opening stages of negotiation can be filled with uncertainty. How assertive should you be? How can you set yourself up for success? What should an opening offer look like? To answer these questions accurately, thorough preparation for negotiation is key. Negotiation research offers guidelines to get talks off on the right track.
… Read More
In Negotiation, Is Benevolent Deception Acceptable?
Do you behave as honestly as possible in your negotiations? Do you view honesty as a critical attribute in your negotiation counterparts? You probably answered these questions in the affirmative: Like many of us, you view deliberate deception to be both unethical and risky.
… Read More
The Art of Negotiation: Anger Management at the Bargaining Table
Displays of anger can pay off for negotiators, at least when it comes to claiming value in negotiation, research shows. Viewing angry negotiators as formidable opponents, we respond to their demands by making concessions, professor Gerben A. van Kleef of the University of Amsterdam and his colleagues found in research from 2004.
… Read More
Mediation Process and Business Negotiations: How Does Mediation Work in a Lawsuit?
How does mediation work in a lawsuit? What benefits can mediation offer businesses that deal with multiple contractual agreements, some of which may end in disputes? These questions were answered by Harvard Law School Associate Professor and negotiation expert Dan Greiner in an “Ask the Negotiation Coach” segment from our Negotiation Briefings newsletter.
… Read More
Managing Expectations in Negotiations
Successful negotiators work hard to ensure that when they and their counterpart leave a negotiation, both sides feel satisfied with the agreement. Why should you care whether the other side is pleased with negotiations or not?
… Read Managing Expectations in Negotiations
The Pitfalls of Negotiations Over Email
Negotiation research suggests that email often poses more problems than solutions when it comes to relationships, information exchange, and outcomes in conflict resolution negotiation scenarios. First, establishing social rapport via email can be challenging. The lack of nonverbal cues and the dearth of social norms regarding its use can cause negotiators to be impolite and … Read The Pitfalls of Negotiations Over Email
Why is Negotiation Important: Mediation in Transactional Negotiations
We generally think of mediation as a dispute-resolution device. Federal mediators intervene when collective bargaining breaks down. Diplomats are sometimes called in to mediate conflicts between nations. So-called multi-door courthouses encourage litigants to mediate before incurring the costs – and risks – of going to trial.
… Read More
Negotiation Strategies: Emotional Expression at the Bargaining Table
Most of the existing negotiation research on affect in negotiation has focused on emotional experience rather than on emotional expression.
… Read More
Negotiation Examples: How Crisis Negotiators Use Text Messaging
In their negotiation training, police and professional hostage negotiators are taught skills that will help them defuse tense situations over the course of long phone calls, such as engaging in active listening, determining the person’s emotions from his or her inflection, and trust building.
… Read More
Setting Standards in Negotiations
As the starting point from which all commercial transactions occur, from purchasing equipment to setting salaries, negotiatiosn in business is an essential skill no matter what field a negotiator finds herself. Using an objective standard can strengthen your proposal and eliminate emotional bias.
… Read Setting Standards in Negotiations
Negotiations, Gender, and Status at the Bargaining Table
When it comes to different characteristics of negotiation styles, a growing body of research suggests that status consciousness varies depending on the gender of interested parties.
… Read More
How to Use Tradeoffs to Create Value in Your Negotiations
How do expectations of fairness and reciprocity at the bargaining table impact negotiator decisions regarding the strategies and tactics they use at the negotiation table?
… Read More
Cognitive Biases in Negotiation and Conflict Resolution – Common Negotiation Mistakes
Negotiators planning to engage in conflict resolution in a personal or business disputes should be aware of cognitive biases in negotiation, particularly when your dispute is being decided by a judge. Before doing so, you should consider carefully what psychologists, political scientists, and legal scholars have learned about judges from negotiation research and social science: … Read More
Emotional Triggers: How Emotions Affect Your Negotiating Ability
Example of negotiation in daily life: Imagine you’re about to negotiate with a competing firm about a possible merger. You enter the conference room and find a reasonable and fair representative from the other company, someone you’ve reached mutually beneficial agreements with in the past.
… Read More
Top Negotiation Case Studies in Business: Apple and Dispute Resolution in the Courts
In August 2012, a California jury ruled that Samsung would have to pay Apple more than $1 billion in damages for patent violations of Apple products, particularly its iPhone. The judge eventually reduced the payout to $600 million. In November 2013, another jury ruled that Samsung would have to pay Apple $290 million of the … Read More
How to Make a Good Deal When You Lack Power
In negotiation, we’re often advised that our most important source of power is our best alternative to a negotiated agreement, or BATNA. When we feel powerless, it’s often because we don’t have a strong alternative if the current deal falls apart or fails to meet our needs. The key to enhancing our power, therefore, is to … Read How to Make a Good Deal When You Lack Power
Reservation Point in Negotiation: Reach Negotiated Agreements by Asking the Right Questions
A reservation point negotiation is a bargaining scenario in which each side is trying to reconcile the other’s highest offer and the other’s lowest price. This negotiation example can apply to many other bargaining situations and demonstrates the value of open communication with your counterpart at the negotiation table.
… Read More
10 Popular Business Negotiation Articles
Here are ten popular business negotiation articles on the Program on Negotiation website. Drawn from a variety of negotiation case studies as well as negotiation research, the following articles offer strategies for engaging in integrative negotiations aimed at creating win-win scenarios for each party at the negotiation table.
… Read 10 Popular Business Negotiation Articles
A Case Study of Conflict Management and Negotiation
In this case study of conflict management, the Program on Negotiation offers advice drawn from negotiation research about forming negotiating teams and avoiding conflicts within teams and working groups.
… Read More
Are Salary Negotiation Skills Different for Men and Women?
Most negotiators don’t engage in the kinds of high-stakes bargaining we read about in publications such as The Wall Street Journal and The Financial Times, but almost every negotiator will need advanced salary negotiation skills during the course of her career to deal with a scenario that is, in many ways, the definition of a … Read More
Renegotiate Salary to Your Advantage
As we prepare to renegotiate salary, most of us intend to ask for as much as we can without antagonizing our employer. But we sometimes undervalue our worth, with disappointing consequences.
… Read Renegotiate Salary to Your Advantage
Diplomatic Negotiations: The Surprising Benefits of Conflict and Teamwork at the Negotiation Table
Let’s take a look back at the 2008 US presidential election and the win-win coalition forged between Barack Obama and his then-rival, Hillary Clinton. As this example demonstrates, if carefully managed, disagreements and diplomatic negotiations can lead to better results than you might expect.
… Read More
Ethics in Negotiations: How to Deal with Deception at the Bargaining Table
You say you would never lie during a negotiation. Your ethical standards are solid—right? But imagine that after spending months looking for a new job, you’ve received an attractive offer to serve as the director of innovation for a growing start-up company.
… Read More
How to Make the Anchoring Bias Work in Your Favor
Because of the anchoring bias, opening offers have a strong effect on negotiation. The first offer made in a negotiation serves as an anchor that influences the discussion that follows, even when that anchor is extreme.
… Read How to Make the Anchoring Bias Work in Your Favor
When Dealing with Difficult People, Try a Complementary Approach
To hear President Donald Trump tell it, the United States under President Barack Obama had bungled one negotiation after another on the global stage due to an inability to stand firm and take tough stances on key issues when engaging in difficult conversations.
… Read More
International Negotiations and Cognitive Biases in Negotiation
In discussing international negotiations and cognitive biases in negotiation, professor Cheryl Rivers of Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia, highlights in a negotiation research literature review, seasoned negotiators often hear stories about the unethical behaviors of people of other nationalities. Perhaps the toughest problems arise surrounding what Rivers calls “ethically ambiguous” negotiation tactics and … Read More
The Negotiation Journal Wants to Hear From You!
The Negotiation Journal would like your feedback on their Fall 2022 issue.
The Negotiation Journal is a quarterly peer-reviewed journal published by the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School. The journal publishes articles that expand theoretical and practical knowledge in the realms of negotiation, mediation, other forms of alternative dispute resolution, and conflict resolution in … Read The Negotiation Journal Wants to Hear From You!
Negotiation Research on Mediation Techniques: Focus on Interests
There is a better way to resolve your dispute: by hiring an expert mediator with a focus on interests – the needs, desires, or concerns that underlie each side’s positions according to negotiation research on mediation techniques.
… Read More
Understanding the Negotiation Skills You Need to Negotiate with Friends and Family
Who achieves the best negotiated agreements: strangers, friends, or romantic partners? In a 1993 negotiation role-play simulation, Margaret Neale of Stanford University and Kathleen McGinn found that pairs of friends achieved higher joint gains than married couples and pairs of strangers.
… Read More
Business Negotiation Skills to Curb Your Overconfidence
To avoid the pitfalls of overconfidence, you need a clear understanding of how overconfidence is likely to affect your judgments and decisions (and those of your counterparts) at the bargaining table. Fortunately, new research suggests exactly when to expect overconfidence and offers insight into how you can prevent it from getting you into trouble in … Read More
Six Strategies for Creating Value at the Negotiation Table
In today’s market, consumers are often the more powerful parties in negotiations with sellers.
To claim the most value in your next haggling experience, use the following six negotiation strategies.
… Read More
When Lose-Lose is the Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement (BATNA)
As the famous tale “The Gift of the Magi” illustrates, sometimes the best outcomes in negotiated agreements is a lose-lose situation for both parties.
… Read More
Negotiation Research Examines Ethics in Negotiating
Lack of transparency regarding negotiations between hospitals and the insurers known as preferred provider organizations, or PPOs, is a key contributor to spiraling health-care costs in the United States, back in a 2013 article in the New York Times. This topic has many questioning ethics in negotiating within the healthcare industry.
The problem starts with the … Read More
Developing Negotiation Skills for Integrative Negotiations – Does Personality Matter?
Imagine that after some negative experiences at the bargaining table or if you are frustrated in your efforts to improve your negotiation skills, you’ve started to worry that you simply don’t have the right personality to be a great negotiator let alone a value-creating, integrative negotiations expert. The other party always seems to get the … Read More
Negotiation Skills from the World of Improv for Conflict Management
A Q&A with Michael Wheeler, author of The Art of Negotiation: How to Improvise Agreement in a Chaotic World.
… Read More
International Negotiations and Agenda Setting: Controlling the Flow of the Negotiation Process
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
Self-Fulfilling Prophecies and Power in Negotiation
When you expect people to be competitive, it’s not only your own behavior that changes. You also set up a self-fulfilling prophecy, such that your expectations about the other side’s behavior lead him to behave in ways that confirm your expectations.
… Read More
Negotiation Tactics for Bargaining with Difficult People: The Comcast Merger
If a competitive bargaining session shifts in a counterpart’s direction, your anger could send the wrong signals to your negotiation counterpart. In this instance, strong emotions portray desperation rather than strength. Here are some bargaining and negotiation tactics for dealing with difficult situations in relationships.
… Read More
Individual Differences in Negotiation—and How They Affect Results
Negotiation advice is often “one size fits all,” yet we approach negotiations with vastly different experiences and traits. How do individual differences in negotiation play out? In one study, Washington University professor Hillary Anger Elfenbein and her colleagues found evidence that individual differences, including personality, accounted for an impressive 49% of the variance in negotiators’ … Read More
Negotiation Tactics for Managing Relationships
When multiple parties gather to discuss issues, someone has to oversee the group’s efforts, or the process will descend into chaos or stalemate.
… Read Negotiation Tactics for Managing Relationships
Dear Negotiation Coach: Eliminating Unconscious Biases at Work By Naming Them
Black men and women continue to be vastly underrepresented in leadership roles in corporate America due to unconscious biases in the workplace, amongst other reasons that may be more conscious. Those who advance in majority-white organizations encounter both covert and overt bias, and often struggle to feel authentic and connected, write contributors to the book … Read More
The Importance of Communication in Multiparty Negotiations
When a team is preparing for a critical negotiation, members need to appoint a leader, allocate roles and responsibilities, and discuss their at-the-table strategy. Another key objective that teams sometimes fail to discuss is the importance of staying “on message” – that is, making sure that statements by individual members don’t contradict the group’s agreed-upon … Read More
BATNA Analysis Can Help You Avoid the Agreement Trap
In both our personal and our business negotiations, “getting to yes” is typically the ultimate goal. Negotiation research and advice tend to focus on identifying the conditions that can help people overcome their differences, relax firm positions, and reach harmonious terms that could lead to a mutually fulfilling long-term relationship.
This mindset risks downplaying the fact … Read More
The Anchoring Heuristic: Anchoring for Maximum Effect
It’s said that you never get a second chance to make a great first impression, and that certainly can be the case in negotiation. A weak handshake or a gruff demeanor can color how we see someone for a very long time. Similarly, make an unambitious or poorly worded first offer, and you’re much less … Read More
Ask A Negotiation Expert: The Accidental Negotiation Expert
For 17 years, Katherine Shonk has been the editor of Negotiation Briefings. The author of two works of fiction (The Red Passport and Happy Now?), she is leaving her post after this issue to devote more time to her next novel and other editing work. Katherine will continue to share negotiation lessons in blog posts … Read More
Definition of Mediation and the Mediation Process: The Impact of Lawyers on Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR)
How does the presence of lawyers affect the mediation process and mediations in general? You might guess that when one or both sides bring an attorney to a mediation, the process would become more contentious and adversarial, with impasse more likely, than if the parties worked solely with a mediator.
… Read More
Conflict Resolution in the Family
In Lessons in Domestic Diplomacy, the New York Times’ Bruce Feiler, drawing on family conflict resolution negotiation examples in his past, offers a case study of conflict management by focusing on disputes in the home, asking, “how do we break out of negative patterns of conduct and proactively approach problems encountered in our everyday lives?”
… Read Conflict Resolution in the Family
The Importance of Negotiation for Female Negotiators: Women Should “Negotiate Hard”
When U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama was offered her first job after law school, it didn’t even occur to her to negotiate for a higher salary, she said in a recent interview in Parade magazine.
… Read More
Diagnose Your Negotiation Techniques and Negotiation Style
How would you describe your negotiation techniques or negotiating style? Are you a cooperative negotiator who focuses on crafting negotiated agreements that benefit everyone, or do you actively compete to get a better deal than your counterpart?
… Read More
Overcoming Cross-Cultural Barriers to a Negotiated Agreement: Negotiation Ethics and International Negotiations
Cross cultural negotiation examples provide insights into how negotiation techniques change depending on the context in which negotiators find themselves. As Professor Cheryl Rivers of Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia, points out in a recent negotiation research literature review, seasoned negotiators often hear stories about the unethical behaviors of people of other nationalities.
… Read More
Conflict Management: The Challenges of Negotiating Online
Negotiation research suggests that e-mail often poses more problems than solutions when it comes to relationships, information exchange, and outcomes. Here is a case study of conflict management and negotiation about the challenges of building rapport with your counterpart when negotiating online.
… Read More
Negotiation Research on Organizational Approaches to Negotiating Systems
While most negotiation research aims to sharpen individual managers’ skills, there is growing scholarly and professional interest in an organizational approach to negotiation.A systemic perspective evaluates the training, authority, procedures, and resources that manager need to improve their companies’ “return on negotiation,” as consultant Danny Ertel puts it. Looking at negotiations broadly reveals important design … Read More
Salary Negotiations and How to Negotiate Performance-Based Pay
Salary negotiations are never predictable. Imagine that you are a sales rep with a company that is getting hit hard by a financial crisis. No one has been laid off yet, but everyone is nervous about that possibility. In an effort to save jobs, your sales manager has quietly proposed that everyone take lower base … Read More
Understanding Your Counterpart’s BATNA
One of the most popular questions concerning negotiation strategy and an area of negotiation research that draws heavily on negotiation examples in real life is how do negotiators identify their BATNA, or best alternative to a negotiated agreement, and even better, how do they identify their counterpart’s BATNA? Consider the saga of a company that … Read Understanding Your Counterpart’s BATNA
Types of Power in Negotiation: Chaos Theory and Bargaining Scenarios
Among the many types of power in negotiation a negotiator can exhibit is an ability to exert control over the negotiation process. But what about those bargaining scenarios in which the negotiator unable to gain control of proceedings? How should she formulate her negotiation strategy?
… Read More
How to Negotiate Online
International negotiators are often faced with the problem of how to overcome cultural barriers to communication. When you communicate in person, social norms – including body language, manners, and physical appearance – guide your behavior and ease the process. Here are some tips on how to negotiate online and building a rapport with your counterpart … Read How to Negotiate Online
Business Negotiation Skills: Fairness at the Negotiation Table
Negotiation research sheds light on negotiator expectations of fairness and equality in negotiations. The negotiation skills advice contained here can help business negotiators more effectively craft agreements with their counterparts in business negotiations.
… Read More
Negotiation Techniques from the M&A World
Negotiators often have to deal with more than one party to reach their goals and often tailor their negotiation techniques towards this end. These negotiation scenarios pose unique challenges, yet most negotiation advice focuses on talks between two parties.
… Read Negotiation Techniques from the M&A World
Coming Up with Win-Win Solutions at the Bargaining Table
Even those who effectively engage in an integrative negotiations or mutual-gains approach to negotiation, a bargaining scenario in which parties work together to meet interests and maximize value creation during the negotiation process, can be stymied by the task of dividing up a seemingly fixed pie of resources, such as budgets, revenue, and time.
… Read More
International Negotiation Role Playing: Understanding the Theory and Practice of Systemic Peacebuilding
Policymakers, practitioners, and academics have seized on the need for peacebuilding negotiation strategies in international negotiation to be as complex and adaptive as the societies within which they work.
As a result, there are loud calls for “whole of government” or “whole of community” approaches that cross traditional sectoral boundaries. The problem is that these approaches are … Read More
The Hidden Hazards of BATNA Development
The following question was posed to Program on Negotiation faculty member and associate professor of business administration at Harvard Business School in the Negotiations, Organizations & Markets Unit, Francesca Gino and involves a negotiation example from real life from the world of business negotiations.
… Read The Hidden Hazards of BATNA Development
Women Negotiators and Barriers to the Bargaining Table
The barriers women negotiators face when negotiating for jobs and career advancement are well known: Women who ask for more money or better opportunities can face a backlash for violating traditional gender norms.
… Read More
How to Overcome Cross Cultural Barriers in Negotiation
How different cultural perspectives impact bargaining strategies at the negotiation table
… Read More
Negotiation Skills in Business Communication – Use Chaos to Your Advantage at the Bargaining Table
Some of the most successful negotiation examples that we have covered here include negotiators engaging in improvisation at the negotiation table, turning chaotic situations into advantages in negotiation scenarios.
… Read More
Definition of the Winner’s Curse in Negotiations
The winner’s curse negotiations, when a negotiator overbids for an item due to competitive pressure or other non-value related factors, is a major pitfall that integrative bargainers should seek to avoid.
… Read Definition of the Winner’s Curse in Negotiations
Negotiation Case Study: Sincerity’s Power in Negotiation
Most of us have had the experience of delivering an apology that fell on deaf ears. When apologies fail to achieve their aims, poor delivery is usually to blame. The importance of sincerity in such a situation cannot be overstated, because if the recipient thinks your apology is less than sincere, she is unlikely to … Read More
Feeling emotional? Pause before you negotiate
It was a dream come true. In January, Miranda and Carlos, longtime coworkers in the hospitality industry, opened a new restaurant in their small town. Locals flocked to the place, praising the ambience, food, and service.
But just two months later, Covid-19 roared into the United States, and state regulations required the restaurant to switch to … Read Feeling emotional? Pause before you negotiate
Register Now for the Online Fall Negotiation and Dispute Resolution Seminar!
This virtual and highly interactive semester-length seminar explores how people negotiate to create value and resolve disputes.
Designed to improve understanding of negotiation theory and build negotiation skills, the curriculum integrates negotiation research from several academic fields with experiential learning exercises. All sessions will be delivered live via Zoom. Emphasizing both theoretical and practical insights, this … Read More
A Global Leadership Vacuum During the Covid-19 Crisis
As the coronavirus outbreak in China exploded into an international pandemic, nations have largely struggled to confront Covid-19 in isolation rather than teaming up on global solutions. That “go it alone” approach has bred dysfunctional competition for scarce resources, a shortage of creative solutions, and enormous inefficiencies. Greater collaboration and coordination are needed to improve … Read More
Negotiating From a Social Distance
As the COVID-19 virus began to spread through the United States, Xerox CEO John Visentin announced on March 13 that the company was putting its hostile takeover of HP on hold in order to “prioritize the health and safety of its employees, customers, partners and affiliates over and above all other considerations.”
With health experts worldwide advising citizens … Read Negotiating From a Social Distance
The Impact of Anxiety and Emotions on Negotiations
Intense negotiation scenarios, we often choose to consult an expert for advice, preferably someone who has carried out hundreds of similar deals with great success. When we consult with others on our negotiations, we must weigh their advice against our own opinions and research. Past negotiation research finds that we tend to undervalue advice from … Read More
Body Language in the Negotiation Process and the Impact of Gender at the Bargaining Table
How important is body language in the negotiation process? Negotiators are often advised to engage in small talk before getting down to business.
… Read More
Negotiation Research and Improving Your Negotiation Techniques: The Similarity Effect in Business Negotiations
Negotiators mimic the behaviors of those they consider peers. What implications does this have for negotiating styles at the bargaining table? To build rapport, social science and negotiation research advise to bargainers to look for common ground.
… Read More
Managing Cultural Differences in Negotiation
It’s important to educate yourself about your counterpart’s culture so that you don’t risk offending her or seeming unprepared. At the same time, it would be a mistake to focus too narrowly when preparing for cross-cultural communication in business. Research on international negotiation can help us think more broadly when it comes to managing cultural … Read Managing Cultural Differences in Negotiation
Deal-Making Techniques for When You Feel Powerless
In negotiation, we’re often advised that our most important source of power is our best alternative to a negotiated agreement, or BATNA. If we feel powerless when making business deals, it’s often because we don’t have a strong alternative if the current deal falls apart or fails to meet our needs. Thus, the key to … Read More
4 Negotiation Tactics Robert Kraft Used to End the NFL Lockout
Robert Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots, was by all accounts a major factor in getting the NFL collective bargaining agreement signed earlier in October 2011. To do so, Kraft employed four key negotiation tactics to help the players and owners come to a “win-win” solution.
… Read More
Deflated by your deal? Get them back to the table
According to U.S. president Donald Trump, trade pacts forged by past American presidents have left the nation with a slew of raw deals. To reduce trade deficits, the president announced on March 1 that he would be imposing tariffs on imported steel and aluminum, a move that would impact China, Europe, and Canada in one … Read Deflated by your deal? Get them back to the table
Bargaining at a Fever Pitch
Have you ever won an auction only to realize later that you overbid for the prize? In competitive bidding situations, it’s easy to get carried away in the heat of the moment and overpay. The Boston Red Sox 2006 procurement of Japanese pitching phenomenon Daisuke “Dice-K” Matsuzaka offers a lesson in keeping cool in these … Read Bargaining at a Fever Pitch
Managing Faultlines in Group Negotiations
Group negotiations are a fact of managerial life, yet the outcomes of teamwork are highly unpredictable. Sometimes groups cohere, reaching novel solutions to nagging problems, and sometimes infighting causes them to collapse. How can you predict when conflict will emerge in groups, and what can you do to stop it?
Dora Lau of the Chinese University … Read Managing Faultlines in Group Negotiations
Negotiation Habits of Great Women Leaders
Pay inequities and a lack of great women leaders in upper management remain enduring problems in the workplace.
… Read Negotiation Habits of Great Women Leaders
Be a Better Mind Reader and Create Value Using Integrative Negotiation Strategies
How important is body language in the negotiation process? Take the following example: The parents of a toddler were interested in finding a babysitter to work one or two nights a week.
… Read More
Announcing the 2017-2018 PON Graduate Research Fellows
The Program on Negotiation Graduate Research Fellowships are designed to encourage young scholars from the social sciences and professional disciplines to pursue theoretical, empirical, and/or applied research in negotiation and dispute resolution. Consistent with PON’s goal of fostering the development of the next generation of scholars, this program provides support for one year of dissertation … Read More
Arbitration vs Mediation: Using Teambuilding and ADR in Negotiation
During his years as George H.W. Bush’s Secretary of State, one of James A. Baker, III’s, goals was to encourage the free-market reforms that Communist Party of the Soviet Union General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev had launched in the late 1980s. One day during his tenure, a high-level Bush administration official commented in the press that … Read More
How to Overcome Cultural Barriers to Communication in International Negotiations
How to overcome cultural barriers to communication: As members of organizations and families, we all know from experience that even people with identical backgrounds can have vastly different negotiating styles and values. Nonetheless, we continue to be intrigued by the idea that distinct patterns emerge between negotiators from different cultures.
… Read More
BATNA: Negotiation Preparation to Help Avoid Giving Up at the Bargaining Table
When you expect an opponent to be competitive, your confidence in the outcomes you can achieve in negotiation is likely to plummet. In negotiation research with Adam Galinsky of Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, negotiators were provided with some background about their counterpart including information on how competitive their counterpart has been in previous negotiations.
… Read More
How Does Mediation Work in a Lawsuit: Choosing the Right Mediator
How does mediation work in a lawsuit? For those new to mediation, we advise you being by getting a list of mediators from a reputable provider agency. You can find these agencies by searching under dispute resolution or by inquiring with your organization’s legal department.
… Read More
A Chance at a Win-Win Negotiation in Hollywood?
Question: What’s the best way to minimize the risk of long-term financial commitments and wrap up a win-win negotiation?
… Read A Chance at a Win-Win Negotiation in Hollywood?
Types of Power in Negotiation: Using Negotiation Research to Eliminate Gender Difference in Bargaining Scenarios
Here are four strategies from negotiation research on types of power in negotiation and how to minimize gender differences in bargaining scenarios and in negotiations.
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Exploring New Opportunities to Negotiate in Conflict Resolution
Many U.S. law schools are in crisis, to hear some tell it. To combat economic downturns, many law firms instituted policies of mass layoffs and pay cuts. Years after the 2008 financial recession, few have recovered.
… Read More
How to Conduct a Mediation During Crisis Negotiations
The most difficult peace negotiations in recent decades—in Ireland, the Middle East, the former Yugoslavia, and Sri Lanka—were plagued by a common enemy: violent disruptions by spoilers opposed to the peace process. In each of these cases, extremists stalled negotiations by creating security crises that divided public opinion and drove negotiators apart.
… Read More
Beware Self-Fulfilling Prophecies in Negotiation
A self-fulfilling prophecy is a prediction of expectations that a person has that comes true because he or she expects it will.
… Read Beware Self-Fulfilling Prophecies in Negotiation
How Your Organization Can Benefit from Mediation Techniques
If you manage people, disputes will show up at your door. The marketing VP protests that the budget cap you and your new finance VP proposed is hindering a research initiative you supported. Two young sales representatives are embroiled in a turf war. Your administrative assistant is upset because the HR director won’t approve the … Read More
How Outsider Status Benefits Negotiators at the Bargaining Table
When faced with the task of assigning a subordinate to represent their organization in a negotiation, managers might look for strong negotiating experience, intelligence, a good attitude, and a winning personality.
… Read More
A Second Look at Rights of First Refusal
When transferring property, sellers sometimes insist on rights of first refusal—the chance to be first in line to repurchase the property if their buyer later decides to sell. A right of first refusal can be an obvious advantage if your financial circumstances later change.
… Read A Second Look at Rights of First Refusal
Adaptability at the Bargaining Table: How Improvisation and Jazz Music Inform Negotiation Strategy
Aggressive tactics and hard-bargaining strategies may, at face value, provide a roadmap to success at the bargaining table but, as the Washington Post’s Kelly Johnson discovered in her interview with Program on Negotiation faculty member Michael Wheeler, adaptability to ever-changing circumstances is essential for the “dynamic” negotiations one encounters in everyday life.
… Read More
Conflict Management Training and Negotiation Research: How Nervous Energy Affects Negotiation Scenarios and Attempts at Conflict Resolution
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 … Read More
Negotiation Research Demonstrates the Impact of Memory on Decision Making Processes in Bargaining Scenarios
Recent negotiation research published by Psychological Science from Program on Negotiation faculty member and assistant professor at Harvard University’s Department of Psychology Joshua Greene and his colleague Elinor Amit explores the impact vivid mental imagery has on decision-making processes for negotiators. The negotiation skills insights that can be obtained from such negotiation research are many … Read More
Contingency Agreement: The Risks and Pitfalls of Issuing Drafts
A draft agreement may allow you to control the early stages of talks, but be aware that it also can obstruct agreement in the long run. Putting a draft on the table may lock parties into bargaining positions prematurely, interfering with a search for common interests and creative options.
… Read More
Announcing the 2016-2017 PON Graduate Research Fellows
The Program on Negotiation Graduate Research Fellowships are designed to encourage young scholars from the social sciences and professional disciplines to pursue theoretical, empirical, and/or applied research in negotiation and dispute resolution. Consistent with PON’s goal of fostering the development of the next generation of scholars, this program provides support for one year of dissertation … Read More
Negotiation Research You Can Use: Women’s Leadership in Negotiation
Numerous research studies have found that women who assertively emphasize their skills, accomplishments, or desire to lead tend to be viewed as less likable and less hirable than men who are equally assertive. Women appear to suffer from this phenomenon, known as the backlash effect, when they act contrary to gender-stereotypical expectations that they will … Read More
Negotiation Skills for Resolving International Conflicts
What are the essential skills a negotiator needs to resolve conflicts abroad? How do international conflicts differ from domestic conflicts? What issues specific to bargaining across borders emerges in intercultural negotiations? In this article we explore ways in which negotiators can develop bargaining skills to overcome any barriers to communication they may encounter in negotiations … Read More
What You Can Learn from Putin’s Negotiation Style
In January 2015 the Negotiation Briefings newsletter featured an article, “Dealing with difficult people – even when you don’t want to,” discussing the impasse NATO leaders had reached with Russian President Vladimir Putin with regards to his unilateral actions in the Crimea. Aside from exhibiting obstinacy in the face of a unified European front, Putin … Read More
Top Worst Negotiation Case Studies: Real Life Examples of Bargaining Gone Wrong
Sometimes negotiators care so much about the issues at stake that they mistake compromise for surrender. Sometimes they’re so confident things will go their way they don’t try hard enough. Our list of the 10 Worst Negotiations of 2014 includes talks that failed for one or both of these reasons, as well as for numerous … Read More
The Program on Negotiation’s Top Ten International Negotiations Posts
Whether dealing with difficult or hard bargainers like Putin or forging business partnerships, international negotiations are fraught with a level of complexity rarely encountered in everyday negotiations. Here are the top ten international negotiation articles on the Program on Negotiation’s website.
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Program on Negotiation associate Paola Cecchi Dimeglio Edits a Collection of Dispute Resolution Essays in “Interdisciplinary Handbook of Dispute Resolution”
Program on Negotiation associate and researcher Paola Cecchi Dimeglio, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Harvard Negotiation Research Project, was the editor for a comprehensive, interdisciplinary guide to dispute resolution that combines negotiation research written in both French and English.
Cecchi Dimeglio’s “Interdisciplinary Handbook of Dispute Resolution,” published by Larcier, is currently available in the Program … Read More
PON Faculty Members Jeswald Salacuse, Deborah Kolb, and William Ury Honored on Time’s List of the Five Best Negotiation Books of 2015
Program on Negotiation faculty members Jeswald Salacuse, Deborah Kolb, and William Ury were named by Time magazine as the authors of three of the five best negotiation books of 2015.
Jeswald Salacuse’s latest work, The Global Negotiator: Making, Managing and Mending Deals Around the World in the Twenty-First Century, describes the negotiation skills people need to succeed … Read More
Negotiation Ethics and Lies at the Negotiation Table
Negotiation ethics can be linked to context and environment – as well as to jealousy experienced by negotiating counterparts. The negotiation research of Maurice E. Schweitzer and Simone Moran is discussed.
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New Findings in the Field of Negotiation: Session Two
The Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School is pleased to present: New Findings in the Field of Negotiation: Research from the PON Graduate Research Fellows with
Arvid Bell PhD Candidate in political science at Goethe University Frankfurt and
Dana Wolf PhD candidate in public international law at American University Washington College of Law and
Todd Schenk
PhD candidate in environmental policy and planning at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Tuesday, … Read More
New Findings in the Field of Negotiation: Session One
The Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School is pleased to present: New Findings in the Field of Negotiation: Research from the PON Graduate Research Fellows with
Vera Mironova PhD candidate in political science at the University of Maryland and
Abbie Wazlawek PhD candidate in management at Columbia Business School and
Boshko Stankovski
PhD candidate in politics and international studies at University of Cambridge
Tuesday, April 21
12:00 – 1:30 … Read More
Team Building Negotiation Example: Chinese Women Face a “Sticky Floor”
What challenges do Chinese female negotiators face in negotiations in China? Like their counterparts in the West, female negotiators in China encounter barriers to doing business, but instead of a “glass ceiling,” many female Chinese feel they are rooted to a “sticky floor.”
… Read More
Today’s Middle East and Israel’s Elections: What is at Stake?
The Program on Negotiationat Harvard Law School is pleased to co-sponsor the Harvard Hillel’s second
Riesman Forum on Politics and Policy
Today’s Middle East and Israel’s Elections:
What is at Stake?
with
Ambassador Dennis Ross
William Davidson Distinguished Fellow
The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
Professor Gabriella Blum
Rita E. Hauser Professor of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law
Harvard Law School
Moderated by
Professor Robert H. Mnookin
Samuel Williston … Read More
International Negotiation: Your Own Worst Enemy?
Knowing how to manage your own internal conflicts before engaging in negotiations is an invaluable negotiation skill negotiators should develop prior to engaging in international negotiations, business or otherwise.
… Read More
PON Graduate Research Fellow Vera Mironova Published by Foreign Policy
Every year, the Program on Negotiation (PON) honors distinguished scholars with a Graduate Research Fellowship that provides support for one year of dissertation research and writing in negotiation and related topics in alternative dispute resolution. These grants promote negotiation research and are awarded to candidates in the social sciences and professional disciplines who are currently … Read More
Lawyers in Mediation and the Mediation Process
How does the presence of lawyers affect the process of mediation? You might guess that when one or both sides bring an attorney to a mediation, the process would become more contentious and adversarial, with impasse more likely, than if the parties worked solely with a mediator. That conventional wisdom is contradicted by new research … Read Lawyers in Mediation and the Mediation Process
Top Ten Business Deals of 2013: Women Lean In
It wasn’t a single mega-deal, but possibly thousands of small ones that sprang up following the publication of Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s book Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead this year.
… Read Top Ten Business Deals of 2013: Women Lean In
Bet you didn’t know…When learning is the best goal of all
Abundant negotiation research suggests that negotiators are better off setting specific, challenging goals rather than vague “I’ll do my best” goals. In a new study, Kevin Tasa of York University in Toronto and his colleagues take a first look at whether it’s better to focus your specific goals on the negotiation process or on its … Read More
PON Podcast: My Neighbourhood with Julia Bacha, Just Vision
The Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School and the Middle East Initiative at the Harvard Kennedy School held a panel discussion following a screening of My Neighborhood, a Just Vision documentary. The podcast is now available.
… Read More
Israeli Settlement Withdrawal: Negotiation lessons from the past, and planning for the future
This presentation by Karen Lee Bar-Sinai and Prof. Robert Mnookin is the fourth seminar exploring the role of urban planning in negotiation, co-sponsored by the Middle East Negotiation Initiative (MENI) at the Program on Negotiation and the Harvard Graduate School of Design.
… Read More
PON Film Series Event: My Neighbourhood Screening with Julia Bacha, Just Vision
The Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School and the Middle East Initiative at the Harvard Kennedy School are pleased to present a screening of “My Neighborhood,” a new Just Vision documentary. A panel discussion will be held after the screening with Julia Bacha, director/producer of My Neighbourhood.
… Read More
Unilateral Initiatives in the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict
Yaakov Katz, a correspondent for The Jerusalem Post and Jane’s Defence Weekly, and Prof. Robert Mnookin, the Samuel Williston Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, will discuss Unilateral Initiatives in the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict.
… Read More
Google Searches for a More Diverse Team
Recently, executives at the Silicon Valley-based internet giant Google noticed a disturbing trend: the company was having difficulty hiring and retaining female employees, from engineers to senior executives, Claire Cain Miller writes in the August 22 issue of the New York Times. Women were dropping out during the job interview process and were not being … Read Google Searches for a More Diverse Team
The Gilad Shalit-Palestinian prisoners exchange: the process, deal and implications
The Middle East Negotiation Initiative at PON invites you to a panel discussion on
The Gilad Shalit-Palestinian prisoners exchange: the process, deal and implications
November 7, 2011 • 12:15 – 2 p.m.
Pound 100 • Harvard Law School
Please bring your lunch. Drinks and cookies will be served.
PANELISTS
Robert H. Mnookin is the Samuel Williston Professor of Law at Harvard … Read More
When women negotiators thrive
Adapted from “What Happens When Women Don’t Ask,” first published in the Negotiation newsletter, June 2008.
Some negotiation research has found that men generally initiate negotiations to advance their own interests much more often than women do. Yet researchers also have identified certain contexts in which women routinely negotiate and achieve outcomes that match or exceed … Read When women negotiators thrive
Why it pays to build relationships
Adapted from “When Lose-Lose Wins,” first published in the Negotiation newsletter, August 2004.
Does negotiation research promote the creation of joint gain at the expense of relationship building? Researchers Jared R. Curhan, Margaret A. Neale, and Lee D. Ross suggest that the field is guilty as charged.
To illustrate, the team apply author O. Henry’s classic tale … Read Why it pays to build relationships
Knocking
At first glance, Knocking is about Jehovah’s Witnesses, the door-to-door proselytizers we like to hide from. But there’s a bigger story as the film asks whether they are a necessary annoyance in a free society. What if you wanted to speak, publish, worship or live as you choose but belonged to the marginalized group of … Read Knocking
A Decision-Making Perspective to Negotiation: A Review of the Past and a Look into the Future
Author: Max Bazerman, Jesse Isidor Straus Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School, author of Judgment in Managerial Decision Making; co-author of Negotiation Genius and Predictable Surprises
Over the past 30 years, the collaboration between the social sciences and the practical application of new ideas in negotiation have provided exciting results. In this paper, Max Bazerman … Read More
Is that really what you want?
Adapted from “You Need to Know What You Want,” first published in the Negotiation newsletter.
Do you really know what you want out of life? Most of us don’t, according to Timothy D. Wilson and Daniel T. Gilbert, psychology professors at the University of Virginia and Harvard University, respectively. The impact bias describes the common, systematic … Read Is that really what you want?
Insights from a Communication and Negotiation Conference: The Benefits of Not Knowing
An Experiment: Exploring Interdisciplinary Linkages between Negotiation and Communication Studies
What would negotiation pedagogy look like if we focused more on the core meanings and practices of communication? How can understanding the underpinnings of communication – the components of conversation and the exchange of meaning – help us understand and improve our negotiations? The weekend of … Read More