Negotiation in strategy making teams : group support systems and the process of cognitive change

This paper reports on the use of a Group Support System (GSS) to explore at a micro level some of the processes manifested when a group is negotiating strategy-processes of social and psychological negotiation. It is based on data from a series of interventions with senior management teams of three operating companies comprising a multi-national organization, and with a joint meeting subsequently involving all of the previous participants. The meetings were concerned with negotiating a new strategy for the global organization. The research involved the analysis of detailed time series data logs that exist as a result of using a GSS that is a reflection of cognitive theory

Negotiation and management

Negotiations are a means of how to solve conflicts and differences through direct communication. It is a structured process through which parties overcome their differences and conflicts trying to reach an agreement about which solution will be acceptable to all. The basic meaning of negotiations is to obtain what you want from others. In this work the principal aspects of negotiations are being discussed, as one of the key business processes and an essential source of competitive advantage. The work attempts to show how one should behave in negotiations, the manner of acting of both opposing parties, in order to achieve the negotiation objectives. In addition, we shall see to get more closely acquainted with the negotiation skills, how to mutually negotiate and to help understand what happens when it comes to more complex situations than those with which every one of us is faced. In the beginning we shall demonstrate the very concept of negotiations and we shall point to how one ought to prepare oneself for them and how to set the objectives. The assessment of the expression of standpoints, their presentation as well as reconciling the divergent positions are the principal segments on which this work rests.negotiation; objectives; assessment; presentation

From the beginning: negotiation in community evaluation

This article focuses on negotiation and discusses its relevance for evaluators. Given the impetus for participatory evaluation, evaluators would benefit from improving skills that enable them to make collaborative decisions and work alongside stakeholders, in particular in community evaluations. Negotiation skills are explored through post hoc reflection of a Sure Start programme evaluation in a UK setting. Literature on stakeholder involvement and negotiation is discussed together with the UK evaluation. Recommendations are made on how to utilize elements of negotiation in community programme evaluation. Key skills are highlighted, including attention to: working with emotional situations, face-giving, rapport and creativity, timing, perceptions and improvisation

Negotiating with a logical-linguistic protocol in a dialogical framework

This book is the result of years of reflection. Some time ago, while working in commodities, the author felt how difficult it was to decide the order in which to use arguments during a negotiation process. What would happen if we translated the arguments into cards and played them according to the rules of the Bridge game? The results were impressive. There was potential for improvement in the negotiation process. The investigation went deeper, exploring players, cards, deals and the information concealed in the players´ announcements, in the cards and in the deals. This new angle brought the research to NeuroLinguistic Patterns and cryptic languages, such as Russian Cards. In the following pages, the author shares her discovery of a new application for Logical Dialogues: Negotiations, tackled from basic linguistic structures placed under a dialogue form as a cognitive system which ‘understands’ natural language, with the aim to solve conflicts and even to serve peace

The strategic use of metaphors by political and media elites: the 2007-11 Belgian constitutional crisis

On 9 December 2011 a new Belgian government was sworn in after a record-breaking 541 days of negotiations between all democratic political forces with the aim to alter the constitution and provide more autonomy to the different regions that make up Belgium. In this article, the frequent use of political metaphors by North-Belgian politicians and journalists is analysed through a critical metaphor analysis (CMA) that approaches the different metaphors at a descriptive, an interpretative and a motivational level. Four meta-categories of metaphors were identified - sports and games metaphors, war metaphors, culinary metaphors and transport metaphors. The different metaphors fed into six core frames: expressing immobility, attributing blame, the need for unity, bargaining and teasing, the end is nigh and finally lack of direction and leadership. Metaphors were instrumental in strategies to present the Flemish demands as unquestionable and common sense, while the counter-demands of the French-speaking parties were positioned as unreasonable, impossible to accept. In other words, the strategic use of metaphors, some of which resonated throughout the long period of analysis, not only served to represent complex political issues in an easily digestible language, but also shaped and influenced the negotiations through their various mediations and the ideological intentions embedded within the metaphor

Negotiators' cognition: An experimental study on bilateral, integrative negotiation

Many negotiations offer a potential for integrative agreements in which the parties can maximize joint gains (through logrolling) without competing for resources as in a 0-sum game; nevertheless negotiators often fail to exploit this potential and settle for suboptimal, distributive agreements. In this study a situation of two-issues bilateral negotiation has been considered. Our aim is to get some insight on the causes that prevent negotiators from reaching integrative, Pareto-optimal agreements. We ran two experiments (one with policy makers and one with students) in which we tested the "fixed pie bias" of negotiators, and we introduced a new explanation for suboptimality, based on the hypothesis of a satisficing (not optimizing) behavior of negotiators, which leads them to a "zone of agreement bias"(ZAB). --integrative negotiation,logrolling,cognitive bias,satisficing