Negotiating for Money: Adding a Dose of Reality to Classroom Negotiations

Negotiation and conflict management courses have become increasingly common in business schools around the world. Frequently, these courses employ role plays and simulations to encourage students to try new strategies, tactics, techniques, and behaviors. While these simulations generally are designed to elicit realistic negotiation dynamics, they often lack the full emotional tension inherent in actual negotiations. One possible reason for this reduced tension is that no tangible resources, such as money, are at stake. This article describes an experiment in which MBA students paid a player's fee at the beginning of a negotiation course, and in which each negotiation exercise had an actual dollar value at risk. The article reports some results from this experiment and offers suggestions for instructors who might seek to add a player's fee to their own courses. In general, most students found the experience valuable, as it provided performance benchmarks while focusing their attention more sharply on risks and returns.     

A New Use for Practitioners in Teaching Negotiation

This article examines the role that practitioners as guest lecturers have traditionally played in the teaching of negotiation. The authors argue that, as seen from the perspective of student learning, this traditional role has not utilized the practitioner's expertise and experience to an optimal degree. Because of this, they have redesigned the role of the practitioner as guest lecturer in their negotiation course. They describe this new role in some detail. Their goal is to encourage students to understand how and why integrative negotiation techniques can work beyond the classroom in what students call the "real world."     

Hard Bargaining in the Classroom: Realistic Simulated Negotiations and Student Values

Empirical research into the negotiation practices of lawyers shows that “hard bargaining,” including at least some unethical conduct, is an inescapable fact of a lawyer's life. To prepare students for legal practice, negotiation instructors must expose them to hard bargaining in the classroom. In doing so, however, instructors should be sensitive to the moral and ethical values of their students, so that the classroom experience does not unduly pressure students to compromise their values. The simulation is the primary tool of negotiation instruction. By selecting and manipulating simulations, a negotiation instructor can expose students to a wide range of negotiating behaviors, from distributive negotiations marked by the use of power tactics to value‐creating negotiations in which participants must consider many interests and collaborative strategies predominate. With that flexibility, however, comes the potential for classroom exercises to pressure students, in ways both subtle and overt, to adopt behaviors that feel uncomfortable. In this article, I examine the use of simulations to teach different types of negotiating behavior, including hard bargaining. Referring to a number of widely available simulations, I suggest ways to focus student attention on three dimensions of negotiation behavior — the issues over which the parties are bargaining, the objectives the parties seek, and the tactics the parties use to achieve their objectives — in order to push students to reflect on their own negotiation behaviors and to prepare for the tactics of others. I assess the potential for simulations to pressure students to compromise their values, and I conclude with my own thoughts on the goals of a negotiation course.     

Transcending the Classroom: A Practical Guide to Remote Role Plays in Teaching International Negotiation

This article discusses the pedagogical value of using remote role plays in cross‐cultural negotiations between two classes taught simultaneously at different and geographically distant institutions. We argue that remote role‐play simulations provide valuable teaching and learning experiences, and are particularly helpful for managing issues associated with outside‐group negotiation and cultural differences, the prenegotiation stage, electronic negotiations and distorted communication, and one‐shot settings in which the negotiator lacks previous knowledge of the partner. The article begins with a discussion of some critical limitations of “traditional” in‐class role plays, followed by a practical guide to remote role plays and a report of our experiences with them. Finally, we discuss the advantages and disadvantages of remote role plays as a teaching tool for international negotiation classes and the key lessons for the participating students.     

The Reputational Advantages of Demonstrating Trustworthiness: Using the Reputation Index with Law Students

Lawyers should care about their reputations. But exactly what sort of reputation should lawyers seek to establish and maintain in the largely nontransparent context of legal negotiation? And even if a lawyer has developed a reputation as a negotiator, how will he/she know what it is and how it came to be? I force my students to grapple with these questions by incorporating the issues of reputation and reputation development into my negotiation/mediation course. I introduced this innovation at the same time that I decided to increase my focus on developing students' skills in distributive (or value‐claiming) negotiation. Although legal negotiation certainly offers frequent opportunities for the creation of integrative joint and individual gains, the process will almost inevitably involve distribution. The pie, once baked, must be cut. As a result, I now base a portion of my students' final grade on the objective results they achieve in two negotiation simulations. Two dangers of this assessment choice are that it can encourage students to focus only on the numbers and, even worse, engage in “sharp practice”— an extreme form of hard bargaining that tests ethical boundaries — in order to achieve the best short‐term distributive outcomes. Of course, neither a quantitative focus nor sharp practice is synonymous with a distributive approach to negotiation. Nonetheless, to counterbalance the temptations posed by the focus on, and ranking of, objective results, I also base part of students' final grades on their scores on a “Reputation Index.” These scores are based on students' nominations of their peers, accompanied by explanatory comments. This article describes the Reputation Index and how I use it. It also explores the empirical support for the validity of the Reputation Index as a tool for simulating the development and assessment of lawyers' reputations in the “real world.” To that end, the article considers research regarding the bases for lawyers' perceptions of effectiveness in legal negotiation, the sometimes counterintuitive distinction between negotiation “approach” and negotiation “style,” and the relationships among perceptions of negotiation style, procedural justice, trustworthiness, and reputation.     

Empowering Students to Create and Claim Value through the Thomas–Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument

In a world of problem‐solving lawyering, principled negotiation, and integrative bargaining, to describe a negotiation as “distributional” may strike some as heretical. Still, we disserve our students if we ignore distributional bargaining altogether. Unfortunately, many law students who are drawn to negotiation classes bring with them a fundamental discomfort with claiming value. Contrary to the stereotypes that attribute aggression and “sharp practices” to lawyers, many law students struggle to become more assertive. The Thomas–Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI) is one tool that I have found can help raise students' awareness of, and comfort with, the reflexive responses to conflict that can impede their attempts to claim as well as create value in negotiation. The insights students gain from taking the TKI can be quickly put to use in the next negotiation role play. Although it may help students realize their dominant response to conflict, the TKI highlights that no single approach to negotiation is always best. Thus, the TKI can both encourage the reticent to claim more value in negotiation and suppress the seemingly insatiable appetites for value claiming that drive other students. When administering the TKI, I encourage students to learn at least four major lessons:

• 1 A negotiator has a choice in resolving the dilemma between value claiming and value creating. We are not just stuck with our reflexes.
• 2 Still, it is good to know what our reflexive response to conflict is likely to be so that we are more mindful of the choices as we make them.
• 3 Departing from reflexes requires energy: preparation, planning, mindfulness, and conscious effort.
• 4 Adaptability is desirable. A well‐integrated negotiator might move from one TKI “type” to another as a negotiation progresses.

In this article, I seek to give a very brief overview of the ways I have used the TKI to convey these lessons, increasing students' comfort with, and management of, value claiming. To this end, the article will describe the TKI, explain how I administer and debrief the students' encounter with it, and point out some potential pitfalls of this process.     

Mega-Simulations in Negotiation Teaching: Extraordinary Investments with Extraordinary Benefits

A mega-simulation is a complex-negotiations teaching exercise involving complicated issues and challenging conditions that is undertaken by three or more teams of students. In this article, I draw on two decades of teaching with mega-simulations in international business negotiation courses to discuss potential learning goals for this type of experiential exercise, effective ways to organize the experience, challenges for the instructor, and the distinctive educational benefits that justify the substantial investment of time and resources required to implement these mega-simulations. These simulations can help students to develop greater sophistication in basic negotiation skills, become more extensively exposed to complex skill sets, and develop a deeper understanding of negotiation subject matter and complex processes than they would by conducting standard role plays. Mega-simulations offer major opportunities for students to move to advanced levels of negotiation skill not just in international business, but in diplomacy, law, engineering, and a host of other professional arenas.     

New Technology Meets an Old Teaching Challenge: Using Digital Video Recordings, Annotation Software, and Deliberate Practice Techniques to Improve Student Negotiation Skills

There is a world of difference between teaching negotiation theory, which pertains to conceptual understanding, and teaching negotiation skills, which pertain to actual behavior in real‐world situations. The principle of reflective practice is widely used for theoretical instruction. Deliberate practice, however, is a more powerful model for skills training. Cognitive scientists have discovered that subjects will learn skills best when they perform well‐defined tasks at appropriate levels of difficulty, and when they are given immediate feedback, an opportunity to correct their errors, and an opportunity to practice until the tasks become routine. To satisfy the deliberate practice conditions for large graduate‐level negotiation courses (some as large as seventy students), students were assigned to use webcams with their laptop computers to video record their negotiation exercises. Before each exercise, students were assigned to prepare for and to concentrate on performing two or three well‐defined tasks. Students reviewed these recordings and commented on their performances in a journal before uploading the videos and journals to an assigned network folder. The instructor and teaching assistants then reviewed the journals and specified portions of the videos and provided individual written feedback to the students. The instructors found that student negotiating skills have improved significantly using this new system. In comparison with earlier semesters, students also felt they were involved in a more intense and personal learning experience. A majority of students reported they intend to apply the principles of deliberate practice in their professional lives after graduation. The authors have found this method continues to challenge their ability to identify and describe the skills used by expert negotiators. As an addition to this new methodology, two of the authors have spearheaded the development of video annotation software, known as “MediaNotes,” to help students and instructors review, comment upon, and learn from video recordings of negotiations. Based on their experiences using the software to support deliberate practice, the authors expect this tool to initiate a significant advance in our ability to recognize and describe expert negotiation behavior and in students’ ability to improve their negotiating skills.     

CustomNegotiations.org: A Free Resource for Creating Custom Negotiation Simulations

Negotiation role‐playing simulations are among the most effective and widely used methods for teaching and conducting research on negotiations. Teachers and researchers can either license a published, “off‐the‐shelf” simulation or write their own custom “bespoke” simulation. Off‐the‐shelf simulations are usually high‐quality, include teaching materials, and are typically priced affordably, whereas bespoke simulations are fully customizable and ensure that participants will face a novel challenge. In this article, I introduce a third option: CustomNegotiations.org, a free resource for creating custom negotiation simulations that have the benefits of both off‐the‐shelf and bespoke simulations. I describe this resource and preview how negotiation instructors can use it to customize simulations for their own classes. I also discuss possible future directions for this kind of platform.     

BABO Negotiating: Enhancing Students’ Perspective‐Taking Skills

Negotiation educators recognize that collaborative problem‐solving is a critical negotiation skill. Negotiation outcomes are often better when negotiators take a collaborative approach to the process, and they are better able to do this when they are able to take the perspective of the person with whom they are negotiating. Over the years, I have developed several techniques to help my students improve their collaboration and perspective‐taking skills. One of these techniques is to use collaborative terminology (BABO = both are better off) rather than more competitive language (win‐win). In this article, I describe the strategies I employ in my negotiation class to increase students’ perspective‐taking capacities and discuss how this focus enhances their ability to negotiate collaboratively.     

An Experimental Study on the Effects of Exitability and Correctability on Electronic Negotiation

The purpose of the present study was to examine via a laboratory experiment the effects of two features of electronic negotiation, correctability and exitability, on negotiation processes and outcomes. We define correctability as the negotiator's ability to revise messages before transmitting them to the other party, thus prompting informational and social elaboration. The opportunity to exit the negotiation that the use of the electronic medium creates, a phenomenon for which we have coined the term "exitability," can give rise to the perception that electronic negotiation is inherently more unstable than face-to-face negotiation. In two experiments, we manipulated the exitability of one of the parties in three ways. In another experiment, we manipulated correctability in two ways. We found that increased exitability caused by the existence of a potential alternative party with whom to negotiate prompted participants to decrease their demands and to reach agreement more often. Increasing the correctability of messages enhanced their clarity and generated more trade-offs, thus leading to more frequent agreements.     

Teaching Negotiations in the New Millennium: Evidence‐Based Recommendations for Online Course Delivery

Traditional methods for teaching negotiation have required both instructor and student to be physically present in the same location. With the advent of the Internet and associated technological advances, however, instructors may now transcend geographical barriers and effectively deliver the same content virtually. In this article, we present an exploratory study comparing two masters‐level negotiation courses: one taught using a traditional in‐person method and the other taught online. Results showed no significant difference in knowledge acquisition as quantified by objective measures, including mean grades. In addition, self‐report data indicate that, although students' skill and mastery of negotiation improved in both courses, online students reported that they experienced less interaction and social engagement with their classmates and instructor. Several course development strategies and best practices are discussed.     

Buyer and Seller Differences in Business‐to‐Business Negotiations

The purpose of this article is twofold: first, to examine the differences between buyers' and sellers' use of negotiation tactics in face‐to‐face business‐to‐business (B2B) negotiations and second, to explore how negotiators' professed negotiation styles influence buyers' and sellers' use of tactics. The methodology is a multiple case study analysis of eighteen negotiators representing twelve companies in six real‐life buyer–seller negotiations in B2B settings analyzed using qualitative research methods, including both comparative analysis and frequency analysis. We found some difference between buyers' and sellers' use of negotiation tactics, which suggests this question deserves further empirical study. Buyers' and sellers' use of specific tactics differs according to which overall strategy the negotiators chose, and sellers generally use a greater number of negotiation tactics than buyers. The findings challenge previous findings that suggest that B2B negotiations are collaborative and that negotiators communicate in a collaborative manner. The findings also increase our understanding of buyers' and sellers' variable use of tactics in the course of everyday practice as well as the interplay between negotiation tactics and strategies.     

How Valid Is Negotiation Research Based on Student Sample Groups? New Insights into a Long‐Standing Controversy

Although a considerable amount of research has examined the impact of experience on negotiation behavior and performance, we still know very little about the usefulness of student samples in negotiation research because most studies have compared the performance of inexperienced students with those who had received some kind of extensive negotiation training or with experienced professional negotiators(s). Against this background, we investigate whether the results obtained from trained student samples are generally similar to those of professional negotiators. Generally, our data confirm our hypotheses that students with some negotiation training and experience perform better than untrained student negotiators and that they are not significantly outperformed by professional negotiators. From this, we conclude that many questions in the field of negotiation research can be effectively tested by using trained students as experimental subjects.     

From Aristotle to Sadat: A Short Strategic Persuasion Framework for Negotiators

Persuasion is undoubtedly a critical negotiation skill. But while the literature has examined its role in negotiation, few, if any, scholars or practitioners have offered a clear strategic framework for putting persuasion into negotiation practice. The ethos, pathos, and logos modes of persuasion elucidated by Aristotle in the fourth century B.C.E. provide a clear, understandable, and easy‐to‐apply framework that students and trainees can use to prepare for negotiation, to deploy during the negotiation process, and to conduct debriefings following a negotiation. In this article, I describe how to apply this Aristotelian framework and explain an additional dimension of persuasion in negotiation that I believe is also critical: timing. Through the real‐world example of Anwar Sadat and his trip to Jerusalem, I demonstrate how this framework has worked in practice.     

Teaching Students to Shape the Game: Negotiation Architecture and the Design of Manageably Dynamic Simulations

Although important work is being done in the emerging field of negotiation architecture and "shaping the game," little of it has found its way into the classroom. Simulation exercises are among the most powerful pedagogical tools available to negotiation educators, but most existing exercises have static architectures in the form of fixed parties, issues, and interests. This article summarizes existing research on negotiation design and proposes a framework for designing "manageably dynamic" exercises that can be used to teach key game-shaping concepts. The framework is illustrated through an in-depth discussion of an exercise based on the negotiations to end the civil war in El Salvador.     

Negotiation and Discourse Analysis

Discourse analysis focuses on the ways that language and symbols shape interpretations of negotiators' identities, instrumental activity, and relationships. These meanings arise, in part, from language patterns that bargainers employ while they are involved in a negotiation. This article provides a brief overview of research findings on language use in six areas of negotiation: strategy, relational development, identity management, emotional expression, issue development, and framing. It also employs a case example of a real estate negotiation to illustrate how discourse patterns discursively construct the nature of risk, certainty, and loss–gain through framing and issue development.     

Culture and Negotiation: The Pedagogical Dispute Regarding Cross-Cultural Simulations

This article examines one especially challenging aspect of active-learning international studies courses—the use of cross-cultural simulations. What is the significance of culture for negotiation? What difficulties might cross-cultural negotiations pose, and how might negotiators work with cultural differences to achieve successful outcomes? Is it possible to model the effects of cultures on negotiators in a classroom role-play? What are the advantages to using cross-cultural simulations, and what difficulties do they entail? How might an instructor make best use of materials that focus on cultural issues and their effect on negotiation? When teaching students of different cultures by active-learning methods, what ought an instructor to bear in mind? What cross-cultural simulations are available, and what readings might be assigned to accompany them?     

Attorneys and Negotiation Ethics: A Material Misunderstanding?

Our research suggests that a true norm of ethical negotiation behavior exists within the legal profession. This conclusion is tempered, however, with the knowledge that a large minority of our research respondents — at times approaching one‐third of them — engaged in unethical and even fraudulent behavior. Additionally, the survey respondents were not saddled with the pressures that practicing attorneys typically confront (pressures likely to make people behave less, rather than more, ethically). In an attempt to understand the reasons for such a high frequency of unethical negotiation, we have identified three major contributing factors: too many lawyers have only a superficial understanding of rules that are more complicated than they appear; lawyers frequently take their “zealous advocate” role too far, thereby placing client loyalty above other important values such as respect for truth and justice; and the practice of law and the people who are drawn to it are highly competitive. To address these factors, we suggest approaching the problem from several different angles. In the classroom, we suggest a focus on the relevant legal standards, including a focus on the often misunderstood law of fraudulent misrepresentations. Because many students fail to appreciate the differences between “ethical” behavior, the floor of socially acceptable conduct, and the expectations that others have for how they will be treated, we also suggest that lawyer training programs focus on the important role that personal relationships and one's reputation play in the legal profession, and how falling short in these areas can decrease one's negotiation effectiveness. For the profession itself, we also suggest clarifying the attorney rules of conduct and provide a number of tactics and strategies to defend against lying and deception during negotiation. Finally, we recognize there are certain psychological factors at play that can cause people to engage in behavior inconsistent with their personal sense of ethics. We believe the only way to avoid these lapses is to integrate conscious and reflective practices that can bring ethical concerns to the forefront of lawyers' decision‐making and thought processes.