Preface to Volume 3
Chris Honeyman and Andrea Kupfer Schneider, Editors
As we noted at the outset of Volume 1, the Negotiator’s Desk Reference is designed to provide the most up-to-date negotiation writings possible from as many disciplines as possible.
Yet the entire, almost fifteen-year progress of the underlying Canon of Negotiation Initiative has been, at least in part, a humbling exercise in discovering how much we, veterans of the field, did not know. That is also the source of our continuing excitement about our field's potential.
In designing the book to include a future Volume 3, we tried to make explicit and structural provision for discovering more over time. We expect to fill the electronic edition's third volume gradually, as we discover and recruit scholars and expert practitioners from cultures and in specialties we as yet know little or nothing about.
What’s Old is New
There are also scholars we know well, but who for one reason or another were unable to update their writings originally contributed for our 2006 Negotiator’s Fieldbook such that we could include them in the Negotiator’s Desk Reference. At least some of these writings, though, continue to be resources unequalled elsewhere. We are therefore beginning our new Volume 3 with twelve chapters republished unaltered from our Negotiator’s Fieldbook. We very much appreciate the cooperation of the American Bar Association, the publisher of that work, in allowing us this republication.
These chapters are linked in full from the Full Contents (for paid members.) A selection from each chapter is also available from the Public Contents.
102. Identity: More than Meets the “I”
Daniel L. Shapiro
How can you expect to get good results in a negotiation if you give little thought to who you really are, and to who your counterpart is? Shapiro analyzes the research on identity, showing how you can predict the likely reactions of your counterpart to some kinds of proposals—as well as your own propensity to avoid some kinds of proposals that might be to your advantage.
103. Communication and Interaction Patterns
Linda L. Putnam
Certainly you know how to communicate; you’re a negotiator, after all. But what if you’re trying to decide whether or how to threaten to walk away? How can you communicate to your best possible advantage at some other particularly sensitive moment? Putnam examines three different areas of communications research—negotiation strategies, language analysis and process patterns—to explain that how we say things is often as important as what we say.
104. On Bargaining Power
Russell Korobkin
Strip away concepts of power based in your opponent’s relative wealth compared to yours, or based on other popular myths, says Korobkin here. What are you going to do if there is no agreement? What is the other party likely to do? Answer those questions, and you will know who really has how much power in this situation.
105. Indigenous Experiences in Negotiation
Loretta Kelly
In a contribution likely to shake many readers’ implicit assumptions, an Australian Aboriginal mediator uses a detailed examination of one key type of case to examine how negotiators who make the common Western assumptions can trip over their own feet as soon as they find themselves negotiating with people who operate from totally different cultural assumptions. The lessons from this chapter are relevant even for ordinary negotiators with no plans to go to the outback.
106. Miswanting
Chris Guthrie and David F. Sally
If you’re assuming that a settlement will make you (or your client) happy, it’s time to question that assumption. By explaining the work of positive psychology (or what makes people happy), these authors explore how people often end up misdiagnosing their own goals. But if you understand your own and your client’s pressures toward misidentifying what you need out of a negotiation, you are better prepared to set goals that will actually work for you both.
107. Heuristics and Biases at the Negotiating Table
Russell Korobkin and Chris Guthrie
So you still think that negotiation is based on “rational” thought? This chapter describes several key aspects of psychology and economics which impact our behavior—whether we like it or not and whether we know it or not. The authors summarize extensive work on how cognitive biases and other “non-rational” decision-making can be recognized, and then used to help reach the agreement you want.
108. Game Theory Behaves
David Sally and Gregory Todd Jones
Almost everybody who has taken a basic course in negotiation in the last 20 years has encountered basic game theory, at least to the extent of the widely used “prisoner’s dilemma” games. But game theoreticians have been hard at work, and have come up with some disturbing findings that go way beyond the simple strategic calculations in the prisoner’s dilemma game and its equivalents. Sally and Jones analyze what has been discovered, and what it means for negotiators who need to think at least one step ahead of their counterpart and one step beyond their own biases. And if you’re a real negotiator, you’re tough enough not to be scared off by a mere equation or two.
109. Untapped Power: Emotions in Negotiation
Daniel L. Shapiro
To many negotiators and mediators an “emotional issue” sounds like one with no real substance to it, yet one that’s liable to damage the situation at any moment. Shapiro shows how unsophisticated that view is. Emotions, recognized and unrecognized, regularly trap professional negotiators as well as clients, when these emotions can be anticipated and dealt with constructively. Not only that, but there are positive uses of emotion in negotiation.
110. Creativity and Problem-Solving
Jennifer Gerarda Brown
It’s routine for people to recognize that negotiations demand creativity. It also seems routine for negotiations to result in rather uncreative solutions, in which many opportunities for a better deal all around were missed. In this chapter, Brown suggests some ways to break out of the predictable—and to get your counterpart to do so too.
111. What’s in a Frame?
Marcia Caton Campbell and Jayne Seminare Docherty
How you conceive what your negotiation is all about, and how the other side perceives it, can be a complete mismatch resulting in mutual frustration. Here, Caton Campbell and Docherty address the all-important question of framing, providing a set of ways to think through your assumptions and those of the other side. You may want to read this chapter in close conjunction with those by Heen & Stone (Vol. 1, Ch. 26) and Coleman et al (Vol. 2, Chs. 83-85.)
112. The Poverty of Buyer and Seller
Kevin Avruch
In a world in which negotiating can implicate your most important values, Avruch points out that the most common mental model of negotiators is that of buyer and seller. Yet both our most intimate and our greatest negotiations have little to do with the whole basis of buyer-and-seller ideas. Avruch offers a way at least to begin to rethink, to find our way out of this trap.
113. When Not to Negotiate
Gabriella Blum and Robert H. Mnookin
“I shouldn’t enter into negotiations at all” is an instinctive reaction of many disputants. Mnookin and Blum provide a useful theoretical framework to demonstrate what a party should consider before making this decision. While they suggest that sometimes it can be entirely rational to refuse to negotiate, their framework shows how disputants may often make distorted assessments, exaggerating the costs and underestimating the benefits of entering into negotiations.
What’s New is Newer
We are in discussions now with the first scholars whose up-to-the-minute discoveries we hope to add to this volume when they are ready. Please check back regularly. We will update this Volume 3 Preface to reflect the new additions from time to time.
Yet the entire, almost fifteen-year progress of the underlying Canon of Negotiation Initiative has been, at least in part, a humbling exercise in discovering how much we, veterans of the field, did not know. That is also the source of our continuing excitement about our field's potential.
In designing the book to include a future Volume 3, we tried to make explicit and structural provision for discovering more over time. We expect to fill the electronic edition's third volume gradually, as we discover and recruit scholars and expert practitioners from cultures and in specialties we as yet know little or nothing about.
What’s Old is New
There are also scholars we know well, but who for one reason or another were unable to update their writings originally contributed for our 2006 Negotiator’s Fieldbook such that we could include them in the Negotiator’s Desk Reference. At least some of these writings, though, continue to be resources unequalled elsewhere. We are therefore beginning our new Volume 3 with twelve chapters republished unaltered from our Negotiator’s Fieldbook. We very much appreciate the cooperation of the American Bar Association, the publisher of that work, in allowing us this republication.
These chapters are linked in full from the Full Contents (for paid members.) A selection from each chapter is also available from the Public Contents.
102. Identity: More than Meets the “I”
Daniel L. Shapiro
How can you expect to get good results in a negotiation if you give little thought to who you really are, and to who your counterpart is? Shapiro analyzes the research on identity, showing how you can predict the likely reactions of your counterpart to some kinds of proposals—as well as your own propensity to avoid some kinds of proposals that might be to your advantage.
103. Communication and Interaction Patterns
Linda L. Putnam
Certainly you know how to communicate; you’re a negotiator, after all. But what if you’re trying to decide whether or how to threaten to walk away? How can you communicate to your best possible advantage at some other particularly sensitive moment? Putnam examines three different areas of communications research—negotiation strategies, language analysis and process patterns—to explain that how we say things is often as important as what we say.
104. On Bargaining Power
Russell Korobkin
Strip away concepts of power based in your opponent’s relative wealth compared to yours, or based on other popular myths, says Korobkin here. What are you going to do if there is no agreement? What is the other party likely to do? Answer those questions, and you will know who really has how much power in this situation.
105. Indigenous Experiences in Negotiation
Loretta Kelly
In a contribution likely to shake many readers’ implicit assumptions, an Australian Aboriginal mediator uses a detailed examination of one key type of case to examine how negotiators who make the common Western assumptions can trip over their own feet as soon as they find themselves negotiating with people who operate from totally different cultural assumptions. The lessons from this chapter are relevant even for ordinary negotiators with no plans to go to the outback.
106. Miswanting
Chris Guthrie and David F. Sally
If you’re assuming that a settlement will make you (or your client) happy, it’s time to question that assumption. By explaining the work of positive psychology (or what makes people happy), these authors explore how people often end up misdiagnosing their own goals. But if you understand your own and your client’s pressures toward misidentifying what you need out of a negotiation, you are better prepared to set goals that will actually work for you both.
107. Heuristics and Biases at the Negotiating Table
Russell Korobkin and Chris Guthrie
So you still think that negotiation is based on “rational” thought? This chapter describes several key aspects of psychology and economics which impact our behavior—whether we like it or not and whether we know it or not. The authors summarize extensive work on how cognitive biases and other “non-rational” decision-making can be recognized, and then used to help reach the agreement you want.
108. Game Theory Behaves
David Sally and Gregory Todd Jones
Almost everybody who has taken a basic course in negotiation in the last 20 years has encountered basic game theory, at least to the extent of the widely used “prisoner’s dilemma” games. But game theoreticians have been hard at work, and have come up with some disturbing findings that go way beyond the simple strategic calculations in the prisoner’s dilemma game and its equivalents. Sally and Jones analyze what has been discovered, and what it means for negotiators who need to think at least one step ahead of their counterpart and one step beyond their own biases. And if you’re a real negotiator, you’re tough enough not to be scared off by a mere equation or two.
109. Untapped Power: Emotions in Negotiation
Daniel L. Shapiro
To many negotiators and mediators an “emotional issue” sounds like one with no real substance to it, yet one that’s liable to damage the situation at any moment. Shapiro shows how unsophisticated that view is. Emotions, recognized and unrecognized, regularly trap professional negotiators as well as clients, when these emotions can be anticipated and dealt with constructively. Not only that, but there are positive uses of emotion in negotiation.
110. Creativity and Problem-Solving
Jennifer Gerarda Brown
It’s routine for people to recognize that negotiations demand creativity. It also seems routine for negotiations to result in rather uncreative solutions, in which many opportunities for a better deal all around were missed. In this chapter, Brown suggests some ways to break out of the predictable—and to get your counterpart to do so too.
111. What’s in a Frame?
Marcia Caton Campbell and Jayne Seminare Docherty
How you conceive what your negotiation is all about, and how the other side perceives it, can be a complete mismatch resulting in mutual frustration. Here, Caton Campbell and Docherty address the all-important question of framing, providing a set of ways to think through your assumptions and those of the other side. You may want to read this chapter in close conjunction with those by Heen & Stone (Vol. 1, Ch. 26) and Coleman et al (Vol. 2, Chs. 83-85.)
112. The Poverty of Buyer and Seller
Kevin Avruch
In a world in which negotiating can implicate your most important values, Avruch points out that the most common mental model of negotiators is that of buyer and seller. Yet both our most intimate and our greatest negotiations have little to do with the whole basis of buyer-and-seller ideas. Avruch offers a way at least to begin to rethink, to find our way out of this trap.
113. When Not to Negotiate
Gabriella Blum and Robert H. Mnookin
“I shouldn’t enter into negotiations at all” is an instinctive reaction of many disputants. Mnookin and Blum provide a useful theoretical framework to demonstrate what a party should consider before making this decision. While they suggest that sometimes it can be entirely rational to refuse to negotiate, their framework shows how disputants may often make distorted assessments, exaggerating the costs and underestimating the benefits of entering into negotiations.
What’s New is Newer
We are in discussions now with the first scholars whose up-to-the-minute discoveries we hope to add to this volume when they are ready. Please check back regularly. We will update this Volume 3 Preface to reflect the new additions from time to time.