A process of finding your counterparts interests and reconciling them with your own. But what if you or your counterpart presents a myriad of options and offers at the negotiation table?
… Read More 
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 topics
What are Negotiation Topics?
Studying different negotiation topics helps us prepare for the sometimes unpredictable nature of real-life bargaining and negotiation situations.
From business bargaining to tough conversations to sensitive and controversial issues, studying and reviewing a variety of negotiation topics can help us prepare for the issues that may come up at any point in a negotiation.
For example, though it’s usually beneficial to discuss all relevant issues simultaneously, there are times when quarantining a particularly controversial issue will allow you to make headway—and build trust—on more manageable matters.
Other negotiation topics may trigger your own assumptions and behaviors that can help create and perpetuate negotiation dynamics you desperately want to avoid. In almost all negotiations, however, the issue of fairness is involved.
Bargaining research has identified three fairness norms that negotiators frequently invoke: equality, equity, and need. Harvard Business School and Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School professor Max Bazerman has found that professional arbitrators relied on a fourth fairness norm: maintaining the status quo.
Many organizations resolve conflict by resisting radical change. Your annual raise, for instance, is probably a percentage increase from last year’s salary—the status quo. What if last year’s salary wasn’t fair to begin with? Then the organization has simply institutionalized a past inequity.
In negotiations, you should strive to bring fairness considerations to the surface, so that everyone will understand one another’s needs and wants.
Learn how you can build powerful negotiation skills and become a better dealmaker and leader. 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.
We will send you a download link to your copy of this free report and notify you by email when we post new information on our website about how to handle conflict management.
The following items are tagged negotiation topics:
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
Test Your Negotiation Decision-Making Ability
A negotiation research study using distributive negotiation examples sheds interesting light on decision-making capabilities, intelligence, and “intuition.”
… 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 More
5 Good Negotiation Techniques
You’ve mastered the basics of good negotiation techniques: you prepare thoroughly, take time to build rapport, make the first offer when you have a strong sense of the bargaining range, and search for wise tradeoffs across issues to create value. Now, it’s time to absorb five lesser-known but similarly effective negotiation topics and techniques that … Read More
In Business Negotiations, Dress the Part
Negotiators involved in high-stakes mergers and acquisitions typically come to the table armored in meticulously tailored apparel and designer shoes. But as Dana Mattioli reports in a recent Wall Street Journal negotiation topics in business article, those who are trying to woo business from an apparel company often end up dressing down at the bargaining … Read More
Business Negotiation: When is an Outsider Needed at the Negotiation Table
One of the most popular negotiation topics in business concerns the role of outsiders to the negotiation. In this article the Program on Negotiation explores how to include outsiders in both your strategy and at-the-table negotiations.
… Read More
Negotiation Topics in Business: Make a Bump Plan
Regrouping from the cancellation of the 2004–2005 season due to failed labor negotiations, National Hockey League (NHL) teams and players faced the challenge of radically restructuring their collective bargaining agreement (CBA) in July 2005. The new CBA instituted a uniform cap (as well as a floor) on team payrolls. It also set maximums and minimums … Read More
Projecting Power at the Negotiation Table
Projecting power at the negotiation table is one tactic bargainers can employ to obtain their objectives in bargaining scenarios. In this article we examine Amy Cuddy’s research with regards to power, body language, and the impact they have on your negotiating skills and negotiation tactics.
… Read More
With Second Book Deal, Amy Schumer Gets the Last Laugh
Dissatisfied with her initial book contract, comedian Amy Schumer used her negotiation skills to bargain for an even better contract. Find out how she did it in this article drawn from examples of negotiation in real life.
… 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
2021-2022 Programs
MAY 2022 HARVARD NEGOTIATION MASTER CLASS
Articles & Insights
BATNA
- Business Negotiations
- Salary Negotiations in the NBA and Beyond
- Negotiation Research You Can Use: Are Women More or Less Likely than Men to Use Deceptive Tactics in Negotiation
- Dear Negotiation Coach: What Happens When a Business Contract Falls Apart?
- Emotion and the Art of Business Negotiations
- How to Mitigate Stress at the Bargaining Table
- Conflict Resolution
- Crisis Negotiations
- Dealing with Difficult People
- How to Handle Difficult Customers
- How To Counteract Deceptive Tactics in Negotiation
- Dear Negotiation Coach: The Case for Lowering Your Salary Expectations
- Negotiation Tactics for Bargaining with Difficult People: The Comcast Merger
- Ethics in Negotiations: How to Deal with Deception at the Bargaining Table
- Dealmaking
- Dispute Resolution
- International Negotiation
- Cross Cultural Negotiations in International Business: Four Negotiation Tips for Bargaining in China
- Famous Negotiators: Tony Blair’s 10 Principles to Guide Diplomats in International Conflict Resolution
- International Negotiations and Agenda Setting: Controlling the Flow of the Negotiation Process
- Famous Negotiators: Angela Merkel and Vladimir Putin
- Overcoming Cultural Barriers in Negotiations and the Importance of Communication in International Business Deals
- Leadership Skills
- Servant Leadership and Warren Buffett’s Giving Pledge
- Managing Negotiators? Avoid 3 Common Negotiation Mistakes
- Dear Negotiation Coach: Will a Flexible Schedule Change Salary Expectations?
- Leadership Principles: The Importance of Follow-Through
- Negotiations, Gender, and Status at the Bargaining Table
- Mediation
- Negotiation Skills
- Negotiation Training
- Salary Negotiations
- Teaching Negotiation
- Asynchronous Learning: Negotiation Exercises to Keep Students Engaged Outside the Classroom
- Learn from the Best with the Great Negotiator Case Studies
- Bakra Beverage All-In-One Curriculum Package is Now Available!
- Teaching Critical Leadership Skills
- Dear Negotiation Coach: How Can You De-bias Job Negotiations?
- Win-Win Negotiations