Improvisation and Negotiation: Expecting the Unexpected

Negotiators must improvise. As the negotiations process unfolds, they work with new information, continually making decisions along the way to achieve favorable results. Skilled improvisational jazz musicians and actors perform in similar ways: they repeatedly practice song chord progressions and notes or scene guidelines before a performance; then, during the performance, they work with the information or the music they hear in order to react and respond, making decisions along the way to produce dazzling music or a compelling scene. In this article, two experts in negotiation, a jazz-improvisation scholar, a former member of an improvisational theater troupe, and a psychotherapist versed in therapeutic improvisational techniques explore the improvisational nature of negotiation.
Several aspects of negotiation are similar to improvisation. Both negotiators and improvisational performers need to have a similar mind-set to be successful, both need to recognize and/or change that mind-set at times, and both must craft creative solutions. But there are some significant differences between improvisational performance and negotiation practice, which this article also notes. For example, personal charisma ("star quality") is a common attribute of successful performers, but not something negotiators may always rely on. Similarly, improvisational artists usually work as a team, while a negotiator is often on his or her own. Nonetheless, the incorporation of improvisation techniques into the negotiation skills repertoire holds great promise for practicing negotiators and is a worthy topic of future negotiation research and teaching.     

Barack Obama Meets Celebrity Metaphor

Common knowledge suggests that elections are won or lost based on demographics, finances, and other structural elements. Whether candidates win or lose, however, is a matter of action. Symbolic identification, metaphor, and an unfolding narrative—and how they are managed and interpreted in the flow of events—determine who will emerge victorious from the democratic struggle for power. The McCain campaign’s effort to cast Obama as a celebrity, with the hollow trivialities and self-aggrandizement of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, proves to be one of the most dangerous episodes for the Obama campaign. In response, the Democrats must adjust the staging of Obama’s Thursday night acceptance speech in Denver as a performance of purpose and gravitas, rather than glitz and adoration.     

Student Success and Failure in a Graduate Criminology/Criminal Justice Program

Despite the burdens that students and institutions assume when underwriting educational careers, very little is known about completion rates, risk factors, and successful strategies of criminology/criminal justice (CCJ) graduate programs. Consequently, the present study tracks 287 master’s and 70 doctoral students who entered the Florida State University CCJ program during the 1991–2000 academic years. Almost two-thirds of this cohort earned an advanced degree. Younger students with higher GRE scores were more likely to complete the master’s program. Successful doctoral degree recipients tended to have lower GRE scores, be non-White, and earn their master’s degrees in-house. In terms of time-to-degree, it took over two years to earn an M.A. and slightly more than six years to negotiate the Ph.D. Implications are explored for the program, the university, and the discipline.     

Effect on benefits of earnings at ages 65 or older, 1995.

A major policy issue for the Social Security program is the treatment of earnings of persons who have attained retirement age. This article discusses the retirement test and recomputation of benefit provisions, and provides statistical data for 1995. In 1995, about 806,000 persons aged 65-70 had significant earnings resulting in the withholding of benefits by the retirement test. About 1,659,000 persons aged 65 or older realized an increase in their benefit amount because of their earnings.     

Reflections on reforming the Canadian electoral system

Abstract. Canada's plurality vote system has been criticized recently for contributing to the regional and linguistic imbalance of the parties in Parliament. While many of the criticisms are undoubtedly correct, some of the promises held out on behalf of a reformed electoral system are open to question. Before Canada seriously considers abandoning its present electoral system, the assumptions made about alternative systems and the arguments presented on their behalf deserve closer scrutiny than they have so far received. By reflecting on the nature of political change and the representative process in Canada this paper comments critically on the adequacy of some of the claims put forward by the reformers. These claims relate specifically to increased party ‘credibility’ and ‘sensitivity’ under a different electoral system. The paper suggests that some of the claims made on behalf of a reformed system are doubtful, that representation in the sense of acting for others could be more a feature of the current system than of any reformed one, and that further research is needed before any final decision is made to alter the present electoral system. Sommaire. On a critiqueé récemment le système électoral pluraliste du Canada, l'accusant de contribuer au déséquilibre régional et linguistique des partis au Parlement. Beaucoup de ces critiques sont certainement justifyées mais certaines promesses faites dans le cadre d'une reiorme du systeme electoral sont discu-tables. Avant que le Canada n'envisage 1'abandon de son systeme electoral actuel, il faut regarder de plus près qu'on ne l'a fait jusqu'ici les suppositions concernant des systemes de rechange et les arguments presented en leur faveur. En reiléchissant sur la nature du changement politique et sur le processus de la representation en cause, l'auteur fait une critique du bien-fonde de certaines des pretentions avancées par certains reformateurs. Ces critiques portent, plus précisément, sur la ← credibility → et la ← sensibility → d'un systeme electoral different. L'article suggere que certaines des pretentions d'un systeme reiorm6 sont contestables, que la representation dans le sens d'action pour le compte d'autrui est peut-etre beaucoup plus une caracteristique du systeme actuel que de n'importe quel systeme reform^ et que des recherches plus approfondies s'imposent avant que soit prise la decision de modifier le systeme electoral actuel. I wish to thank Duff Spafford of the University of Saskatchewan and Paul McKee, Research Fellow, Nuffield College, Oxford, for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper; the Warden and Fellows of Nuffield College for the hospitality and assistance accorded me during my sabbatical leave; and the SSHRCC for its assistance through a Leave Fellowship, 1979-80. The case for an altered Canadian electoral system must be examined a good deal more critically than it has been to date. This essay attempts to contribute to that process by examining a few of the claims made recently on behalf of a reformed electoral system and by commenting on those claims in the light of Canadian political experience. The paper is not intended to make a virtue of the present system but it does raise questions about the liklihood of a reformed system living up to its advance bil-ling. How is the problem defined? What are some of the benefits claimed on behalf of a reformed system? What are the notions of representation underlying the arguments? If answers could be suggested to such questions as these, they may give cause to reflect on the general case being made in support of an altered system and on the appropriateness of abandoning or altering the present system without further study. Although the recent literature on electoral reform in Canada has been sizable, its quality has been uneven. Between the two notable contributions of the last decade (the Cairns-Lovink debate of 1968-70 and the Irvine monograph of 1979) a number of government reports, chapters in books, and newspaper articles were published. If some of the arguments and assertions of this admittedly mixed group remain unchallenged they may in the long run prove seductive to an unsuspecting public, academic as well as general, looking for much more to come from a reformed system than it can possibly deliver. Certainly it has not yet been established in the literature that the electoral system warrants such critical analysis in isolation from or, indeed, at the expense of other representational concerns which in themselves may be more crucial to the healthy operation of the Canadian polity than a reformed electoral system.