Section X: The Hidden Ideas that Power Our Field
Volume 2 (in the print edition) begins with The Hidden Ideas that Power Our Field. The first of these, but perhaps not the best hidden, is metaphor. (Metaphor is all around us, it’s the oxygen in our intellectual atmosphere.) Following our chapter on metaphor is one on why, when we consider whether or not to negotiate (and how), we are making moral choices as well as practical ones.
Of course, illustrating hidden ideas is problematic, or they wouldn’t be hidden: the next chapter discusses literature as a rich source of examples and explanations. Yet many ideas don’t reduce themselves easily to writing, and the following two chapters explore groundbreaking ideas of how aesthetics, particularly ideas of beauty and alchemy, can be used to open up negotiating possibilities that remain invisible if only the standard approaches are used.
The final two chapters of Section X return to ideas that have definitely been expressed in text, but not necessarily understood: the core ideas of one of the field’s founders, and the “jungle” of competing negotiation theories.
52. The Road to Hell is Paved with Metaphors
Howard Gadlin, Andrea Kupfer Schneider and Chris Honeyman
Metaphors are so deeply embedded in our minds that they are, to a large extent, how we think. This creates an enormous trap for negotiators, as they not only tend to start out with metaphors for conflict handling that derive from war, but tend not to notice their assumptions. Yet metaphor can be the key to a solution, as well as the central problem. The authors argue that developing a holistic understanding is the essential element in using metaphor creatively--that, and avoiding letting a metaphor creep up on us, like a thief in the night.
53. The Morality of Compromise
Carrie Menkel-Meadow
Does how we negotiate reflect or shape our character, or both? Does choosing to negotiate have moral implications? What are the ethical and moral implications of making the assumption that negotiation is inappropriate? Here, Menkel-Meadow notes that not all negotiation is based in the idea of compromise, and discusses the ethical and moral underpinnings of our choices in negotiation – choices we may ignore we are making, but cannot avoid making. Compromise, in some cases, may be more moral and appropriate than not to negotiate at all.
54. Literature and the Teaching of Negotiation
David Matz
The author, a veteran teacher of the field, found himself wondering how to address the subtler concepts necessary to teach an advanced course, in ways that would get students to think more deeply about the possibilities and limitations of their work. He discovered that literature provided a potential answer. Here, Matz discusses more than a dozen books and other writings he has found particularly insightful in teaching negotiation, and shows how each contributes to a rounded view of what negotiation can and cannot do.
55. Aesthetics in Negotiation: Part One—Four Elements
Nadja Alexander and Michelle LeBaron
At least in the West, negotiators have mostly assumed that the arts have little or nothing to do with their work. Not so, say the neuroscientists, in increasingly persuasive recent work. Here, the authors review that research, and place it in context of ancient wisdom. They draw a line through the classicists’ four elements—earth, water, air and fire—and relate each concept to the heart and mind of negotiators. It turns out that aesthetics are a clue to much that’s going on at the back of our counterparts’ minds, and our own. We will negotiate better if we take due account of the wisdom they offer. This chapter should be read in conjunction with the same authors’ Part Two, in which they argue for a contemporary negotiation application of the ancient concept of alchemy.
56. Aesthetics in Negotiation: Part Two—the Uses of Alchemy
Michelle LeBaron and Nadja Alexander
The authors here pursue the logic of their Part One chapter further. Showing how negotiators tend to concentrate on a limited range of skills and stimuli, while overlooking others, they argue that the ancient concept of alchemy works in conjunction with modern concepts of neuroscience to unlock a whole series of aesthetics-derived, embodied strategies and approaches. These, they contend, make it possible to advance “stuck” negotiations in which progress is stalled, as well as to improve a whole range of less complex negotiation processes.
57. Negotiation as Law’s Shadow: On the Jurisprudence of Roger Fisher
Amy J. Cohen
The author reviews the life work of one of negotiation’s most famous scholars, and reveals a wholly new observation. Roger Fisher, she argues, did not understand negotiation as primarily something that happens in the shadow of the law. Rather, based on his years thinking about international conflict, Fisher offered a theory of negotiation as a form of legal ordering and, by extension, a theory of law as a form of negotiation—one with enduring relevance for dispute resolution today.
58. Taming the Jungle of Negotiation Theories
John Lande
Is there such a thing as a generally reliable theory of negotiation? Is there even a coherent definition of what negotiation is? And if not, how are we to make sense of a field that produces so many examples in so many settings? Lande has studied a wide variety of texts and sources, and sets out to pull them into, if not a single coherent range, at least a recognizable matrix.
Of course, illustrating hidden ideas is problematic, or they wouldn’t be hidden: the next chapter discusses literature as a rich source of examples and explanations. Yet many ideas don’t reduce themselves easily to writing, and the following two chapters explore groundbreaking ideas of how aesthetics, particularly ideas of beauty and alchemy, can be used to open up negotiating possibilities that remain invisible if only the standard approaches are used.
The final two chapters of Section X return to ideas that have definitely been expressed in text, but not necessarily understood: the core ideas of one of the field’s founders, and the “jungle” of competing negotiation theories.
52. The Road to Hell is Paved with Metaphors
Howard Gadlin, Andrea Kupfer Schneider and Chris Honeyman
Metaphors are so deeply embedded in our minds that they are, to a large extent, how we think. This creates an enormous trap for negotiators, as they not only tend to start out with metaphors for conflict handling that derive from war, but tend not to notice their assumptions. Yet metaphor can be the key to a solution, as well as the central problem. The authors argue that developing a holistic understanding is the essential element in using metaphor creatively--that, and avoiding letting a metaphor creep up on us, like a thief in the night.
53. The Morality of Compromise
Carrie Menkel-Meadow
Does how we negotiate reflect or shape our character, or both? Does choosing to negotiate have moral implications? What are the ethical and moral implications of making the assumption that negotiation is inappropriate? Here, Menkel-Meadow notes that not all negotiation is based in the idea of compromise, and discusses the ethical and moral underpinnings of our choices in negotiation – choices we may ignore we are making, but cannot avoid making. Compromise, in some cases, may be more moral and appropriate than not to negotiate at all.
54. Literature and the Teaching of Negotiation
David Matz
The author, a veteran teacher of the field, found himself wondering how to address the subtler concepts necessary to teach an advanced course, in ways that would get students to think more deeply about the possibilities and limitations of their work. He discovered that literature provided a potential answer. Here, Matz discusses more than a dozen books and other writings he has found particularly insightful in teaching negotiation, and shows how each contributes to a rounded view of what negotiation can and cannot do.
55. Aesthetics in Negotiation: Part One—Four Elements
Nadja Alexander and Michelle LeBaron
At least in the West, negotiators have mostly assumed that the arts have little or nothing to do with their work. Not so, say the neuroscientists, in increasingly persuasive recent work. Here, the authors review that research, and place it in context of ancient wisdom. They draw a line through the classicists’ four elements—earth, water, air and fire—and relate each concept to the heart and mind of negotiators. It turns out that aesthetics are a clue to much that’s going on at the back of our counterparts’ minds, and our own. We will negotiate better if we take due account of the wisdom they offer. This chapter should be read in conjunction with the same authors’ Part Two, in which they argue for a contemporary negotiation application of the ancient concept of alchemy.
56. Aesthetics in Negotiation: Part Two—the Uses of Alchemy
Michelle LeBaron and Nadja Alexander
The authors here pursue the logic of their Part One chapter further. Showing how negotiators tend to concentrate on a limited range of skills and stimuli, while overlooking others, they argue that the ancient concept of alchemy works in conjunction with modern concepts of neuroscience to unlock a whole series of aesthetics-derived, embodied strategies and approaches. These, they contend, make it possible to advance “stuck” negotiations in which progress is stalled, as well as to improve a whole range of less complex negotiation processes.
57. Negotiation as Law’s Shadow: On the Jurisprudence of Roger Fisher
Amy J. Cohen
The author reviews the life work of one of negotiation’s most famous scholars, and reveals a wholly new observation. Roger Fisher, she argues, did not understand negotiation as primarily something that happens in the shadow of the law. Rather, based on his years thinking about international conflict, Fisher offered a theory of negotiation as a form of legal ordering and, by extension, a theory of law as a form of negotiation—one with enduring relevance for dispute resolution today.
58. Taming the Jungle of Negotiation Theories
John Lande
Is there such a thing as a generally reliable theory of negotiation? Is there even a coherent definition of what negotiation is? And if not, how are we to make sense of a field that produces so many examples in so many settings? Lande has studied a wide variety of texts and sources, and sets out to pull them into, if not a single coherent range, at least a recognizable matrix.
Section X authors:
Nadja Alexander is Academic Director at the Singapore International Dispute Resolution Academy, and Visiting Professor of Law at Singapore Management University. An awardwinning (2011, 2007, 1997) author and educator, Nadja also works as a policy adviser and conflict intervener in diverse dispute resolution settings. Her work on cross-border and cross-cultural conflict embraces interdisciplinary approaches to deepen conflict
engagement. Nadja has been appointed Honorary Professor at The University of Queensland, Australia, and Senior Fellow of the Dispute Resolution Institute at Mitchell Hamline School of Law in the United States. Her books include International and Comparative Mediation; Global Trends in Mediation; Negotiation: Strategy Style Skills, and The EU Mediation Handbook.
Amy J. Cohen is professor of law at the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, where she studies informal and formal dispute resolution, law and economic development, and the political economy of food. She is currently writing about negotiations in Indian food supply chains in the shadow of supermarket restructuring. Cohen has held visiting professorships at Harvard Law School, Osgoode Hall Law School, the University of Turin, and the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences, and fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the Fulbright Program, and the American Institute of Indian Studies.
Howard Gadlin retired after serving for 18 years as Ombudsman at the National Institutes of Health. Before that he was University Ombudsperson and director of the UCLA Conflict Mediation Program and co-director of the Center for the Study and Resolution of Interethnic/Interracial Conflict. Earlier he was Ombudsperson and Professor of Psychology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Currently he is studying the dynamics of scientific collaborations and developing approaches to address conflicts among scientists. He is co-author of Collaboration and Team Science: A Field Guide and author, among other writings, of Bargaining in the Shadow of Management; Conflict, Cultural Differences, and the Culture of Racism; and Mediating Sexual Harassment.
Chris Honeyman is managing partner of Convenor Conflict Management, a consulting firm based in Washington, DC. He is co-editor of The Negotiator’s Desk Reference and five other books, and author of over 90 published articles, book chapters and monographs. He has directed a 25-year series of research-and-development programs, advised many academic and practice organizations, and served as a mediator, arbitrator and in
other neutral capacities in more than 2,000 disputes.
John Lande is the Isidor Loeb Professor Emeritus at the University of Missouri School of Law and former director of its LLM Program in Dispute Resolution. He received his J.D. from Hastings College of Law and his Ph.D in sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He began mediating in 1982 in California. His work focuses on dispute systems design and legal education, and he has been honored by the CPR Institute. The
ABA published the second edition of his book Lawyering with Planned Early Negotiation: How You Can Get Good Results for Clients and Make Money.
Professor Michelle LeBaron is a conflict transformation scholar/practitioner at the University of British Columbia Allard School of Law whose work is animated by creativity, culture and interdisciplinarity. She has done seminal work in many types of conflicts including intercultural, international, family, organizational and commercial, exploring how arts help shift intractable conflicts. She is a fellow at the Trinity College Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Research Institute in Dublin and holds a Wallenberg Fellowship at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Studies, South Africa. Her books include The Choreography of Resolution: Conflict, Movement and Neuroscience; Conflict Across Cultures: A New Approach for a Changing World; Bridging Cultural Conflicts; and Bridging Troubled Waters.
David Matz has been teaching negotiation for forty years, and has also practiced extensively as a mediator and consultant. He has taught in graduate programs in conflict resolution, programs for the elderly, law schools, divinity schools, high schools, grade schools, and programs for at least eight professions. He has taught on four continents, live and on line. He needs to do something new. Hence his essay here.
Carrie Menkel-Meadow is Chancellor’s Professor of Law and Political Science, University of California, Irvine and A.B. Chettle Professor of Law, Dispute Resolution and Civil Procedure at Georgetown University Law Center. She has published over 10 books and 200 articles in the fields of conflict and dispute resolution. She has received three honorary doctorates, and has taught and practiced mediation, restorative justice, negotiation, conflict resolution and ethics in 26 countries, and on all seven continents. She has been a conflict consultant to the World Bank, UN, International Red Cross and the U.S. Federal Judicial Center, as well as to many court systems and public and private organizations.
Andrea Kupfer Schneider is a Professor of Law at Marquette University Law School and is the director of Marquette’s nationally-ranked dispute resolution program. Professor Schneider has written numerous books, book chapters and articles on negotiation skills and styles, dispute system design, international conflict, and gender and negotiation. She was named the Outstanding Scholar by the ABA Section of Dispute Resolution for
2017.
Nadja Alexander is Academic Director at the Singapore International Dispute Resolution Academy, and Visiting Professor of Law at Singapore Management University. An awardwinning (2011, 2007, 1997) author and educator, Nadja also works as a policy adviser and conflict intervener in diverse dispute resolution settings. Her work on cross-border and cross-cultural conflict embraces interdisciplinary approaches to deepen conflict
engagement. Nadja has been appointed Honorary Professor at The University of Queensland, Australia, and Senior Fellow of the Dispute Resolution Institute at Mitchell Hamline School of Law in the United States. Her books include International and Comparative Mediation; Global Trends in Mediation; Negotiation: Strategy Style Skills, and The EU Mediation Handbook.
Amy J. Cohen is professor of law at the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, where she studies informal and formal dispute resolution, law and economic development, and the political economy of food. She is currently writing about negotiations in Indian food supply chains in the shadow of supermarket restructuring. Cohen has held visiting professorships at Harvard Law School, Osgoode Hall Law School, the University of Turin, and the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences, and fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the Fulbright Program, and the American Institute of Indian Studies.
Howard Gadlin retired after serving for 18 years as Ombudsman at the National Institutes of Health. Before that he was University Ombudsperson and director of the UCLA Conflict Mediation Program and co-director of the Center for the Study and Resolution of Interethnic/Interracial Conflict. Earlier he was Ombudsperson and Professor of Psychology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Currently he is studying the dynamics of scientific collaborations and developing approaches to address conflicts among scientists. He is co-author of Collaboration and Team Science: A Field Guide and author, among other writings, of Bargaining in the Shadow of Management; Conflict, Cultural Differences, and the Culture of Racism; and Mediating Sexual Harassment.
Chris Honeyman is managing partner of Convenor Conflict Management, a consulting firm based in Washington, DC. He is co-editor of The Negotiator’s Desk Reference and five other books, and author of over 90 published articles, book chapters and monographs. He has directed a 25-year series of research-and-development programs, advised many academic and practice organizations, and served as a mediator, arbitrator and in
other neutral capacities in more than 2,000 disputes.
John Lande is the Isidor Loeb Professor Emeritus at the University of Missouri School of Law and former director of its LLM Program in Dispute Resolution. He received his J.D. from Hastings College of Law and his Ph.D in sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He began mediating in 1982 in California. His work focuses on dispute systems design and legal education, and he has been honored by the CPR Institute. The
ABA published the second edition of his book Lawyering with Planned Early Negotiation: How You Can Get Good Results for Clients and Make Money.
Professor Michelle LeBaron is a conflict transformation scholar/practitioner at the University of British Columbia Allard School of Law whose work is animated by creativity, culture and interdisciplinarity. She has done seminal work in many types of conflicts including intercultural, international, family, organizational and commercial, exploring how arts help shift intractable conflicts. She is a fellow at the Trinity College Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Research Institute in Dublin and holds a Wallenberg Fellowship at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Studies, South Africa. Her books include The Choreography of Resolution: Conflict, Movement and Neuroscience; Conflict Across Cultures: A New Approach for a Changing World; Bridging Cultural Conflicts; and Bridging Troubled Waters.
David Matz has been teaching negotiation for forty years, and has also practiced extensively as a mediator and consultant. He has taught in graduate programs in conflict resolution, programs for the elderly, law schools, divinity schools, high schools, grade schools, and programs for at least eight professions. He has taught on four continents, live and on line. He needs to do something new. Hence his essay here.
Carrie Menkel-Meadow is Chancellor’s Professor of Law and Political Science, University of California, Irvine and A.B. Chettle Professor of Law, Dispute Resolution and Civil Procedure at Georgetown University Law Center. She has published over 10 books and 200 articles in the fields of conflict and dispute resolution. She has received three honorary doctorates, and has taught and practiced mediation, restorative justice, negotiation, conflict resolution and ethics in 26 countries, and on all seven continents. She has been a conflict consultant to the World Bank, UN, International Red Cross and the U.S. Federal Judicial Center, as well as to many court systems and public and private organizations.
Andrea Kupfer Schneider is a Professor of Law at Marquette University Law School and is the director of Marquette’s nationally-ranked dispute resolution program. Professor Schneider has written numerous books, book chapters and articles on negotiation skills and styles, dispute system design, international conflict, and gender and negotiation. She was named the Outstanding Scholar by the ABA Section of Dispute Resolution for
2017.