Negotiation Chapter 12 : Best practices in Negotiations

This chapter reflect on negotiation at broad level by providing 10 “best practices” for negotiators who which to continue to improve their negotiation skills. Ten best practices for negotiators are as follow:
1.Be prepared: Good preparation means setting aspirations for negotiation that are high but achievable
2.Diagnose the fundamental structure of the negotiation: a distributive negotiation, an integrative negotiation, or a blend of the two
3.Identify and work the BATNA: three things should be done with respect to other negotiator’s BATNA – monitor carefully, remind other negotiator’s advantages, and suggest other negotitor
4.Be willing to walk away: goal is achieving a valued outcome, not reaching an agreement per se.
5.Master paradoxes: the best way to manage paradox is to achieve a balance between the opposing forces
6.Remember the intangibles: intangibles frequently affect negotiation in a negative way
7.Actively manage coalitions: three types of coalitions and their potential effects – coalitions against you, coalitions that support you, and loose, undefined coalition that may materialize either for or against you
8.Savor and protect your reputation: Reputation is fragile, important to build, easy to break and very hare to rebuild once broken.
9.Remember that rationality and fairness are relative
10.Continue to learn from the experience: the best negotiator should analyze each negotiation after it has concluded, to review what happened and what they learned.

Negotiation Chapter 11 : International and Cross-Cultural Negotiation

This chapter discusses some of the factors that make international negotiation different, including environmental context (such as political and legal pluralism, international economics, foreign governments and bureaucracies, instability, ideology, culture, and external stakeholders) and the immediate context (such as relative bargaining power, levels of conflict, relationship between negotiators, desired outcomes, and immediate stakeholders). This chapter also described the effect of culture, how culture has been conceptualized. There are two important ways that culture has been conceptualized: culture as shared value, and culture dialectic. The influence of culture on negotiations is listed in term of managerial and research perspectives. From the practitioner perspective, we discussed 10 ways that culture can influences negotiation: the definition of negotiation, the negotiation opportunity, the selection of negotiators, protocol, communication, time sensitivity, risk propensity, groups versus individuals, the nature of agreements, and emotionalism. From the research perspective, we examined the effects of culture on negotiation outcomes, negotiation process, negotiator cognition, and negotiator ethics. This chapter also discussed eight different culturally responsive strategies that negotiators can use with a negotiator from a different culture.

Negotiation Chapter 10 : Multiple Parties and Teams

This chapter purposely describes how the negotiation process changes when there are more than two parties. First of all, the nature of multiparty negotiation differs from two-party deliberations in several ways which make more complex, challenging, and difficult to manage such as number of parties, informational and computational complexity, social complexity, procedural complexity, and strategic complexity. Understanding the attributes of an effective group will help to understand the multiparty negotiation means. Effective groups and their members do the following things:
1.Test assumptions and inferences
2.Share all relevant information
3.Focus on interests, not positions
4.Be specific – use examples
5.Agree on what important works mean
6.Explain the reasons behind one’s statements, questions, and answers
7.Disagree openly with any member of the group
8.Make statements, then invite questions and comments
9.Jointly design ways to test disagreements and solutions
10.Discuss undiscussable issues
11.Keep the discussion focused
12.Do not take cheap shots or otherwise distract the group
13.Expect to have all members participate in all phases of the process
14.Exchange relevant information with nongroup members.
15.Make decisions by consensus
16.Conduct a self-critique
There are three key stages that characterize multiparty negotiation: prenegotiation, actual negotiation, and managing the agreement. The prenegotiation stage is characterized by lots of informal contact among the parties so we should work on who the participants are, what coalitions are, defining group member roles, understanding the costs and consequences of no agreement, and learning the issues and constructing an agenda. In term of formal negotiation stage, the negotiation process and outcome should be managed by appointing an appropriate chair, using and restructuring the agenda, ensuring a diversity of information and perspectives, ensuring consideration of all the available information, managing conflict effectively, reviewing and managing the decision rules, striving for a first agreement, and managing problem team members. Last stage is the agreement phase, there are four key problem-solving steps need to occur during this phase: select the best solution, develop an action plan, implement the action plan, and evaluate the just-completed process.

Negotiation Chapter 9 : Relationships in Negotiation

This chapter identifies several issues that make negotiating in relationship different from and more challenging than conducting either distributive or integrative negotiations between parties who have no past or intended future relationship. “Relationship” is the meaning assigned by two or more individuals to their connectedness or coexistence. There are four key dimensions of relationship; Attraction, Rapport, Bonding, and Breadth. Reputation, trust, and justice are three elements that be come more critical and pronounced when they occur within a relationship negotiation. Your reputation is how other people remember their past experience with you, so it is the legacy that you leave behind after a negotiation encounter with another party. Higher levels of trust make negotiation easier, while lower levels of trust make negotiation more difficult. There are three things that contribute to the level of trust one negotiator may have for another: the individual’s chronic disposition toward trust; situation factors; and the history of the relationship between the parties. The third major issue in relationships is the question of what is fair or just. Not only are various form of justice interrelated, but reputation, trust, and justice all interact in shaping expectations of the other’s behavior

Negotiation Chapter 8 : Ethics in Negotiation

This chapter talked about ethical standard for behavior in negotiation. The negotiators need to know about ethics because they often make decision about the strategies might concern about the ethic. The Ethics are broadly applied social standard for what is right or wrong while the morals are individual or personal belief about what is right or wrong. There are four standards for evaluating strategies and tactics in negotiation as follow:
· End-result ethics: Based on the expected outcomes
· Rule ethics: Based on what the law says
· Social-contrast ethics: Based on the strategies and values of the society
· Personalistic ethics: Based on one’s own conscience and moral standard
The simple model of ethical decision making is help explain how the negotiator whether to employ one or more deceptive tactics. The model starts at being in the influence situation, then identifying a range of possible influence tactics. After identifying, the negotiator decides to select and use one or more tactics, and evaluate the consequences: Impact of Tactics, Self-evaluation, and feedback or reaction from other negotiator. Negative or positive conclusion leads the negotiator to explain or justify the use of the tactics. Ethical tactics in Negotiation are mostly about truth telling. There are six categories of marginally ethical Negotiation Tactics: traditional competitive bargaining, emotional manipulation, misrepresentation, misrepresentation to opponent’s networks, inappropriate information gathering, and bluffing. This chapter also focused on the intentions and motives to use deceptive tactics. Different types of deception can serve different purpose in negotiation. The motivation can affect the tendency to use deceptive tactics. The consequences of unethical conduct are based on whether the tactic is effective; how the other person evaluates the tactic; and how the negotiator evaluates the tactic. When the negotiator uses the tactic that may produce the reaction, the negotiator must prepare to defend. The primary purpose of the explanation and justifications is to rationalize, explain, or excuse the behavior. When the negotiators deal with the other party’s use of deception, they can generally do the following:
· Ask Probing Questions
. Recognize the Tactic

Leadership Chapter 12 : Leading through Effective External Relations

This chapter talked about guidelines to help manage external relations in daily encounters and in crisis situation toward the company’s positive image. We should know how to apply the communication strategy to external relations, how to shape a positive image, how to deal with the media, and how to manage crisis communication.

In developing an external relations strategy, the company should clarify purpose and strategic objectives. The messages communicated in all external materials should be clear and consistent in order to avoid confusion and unwanted associations. Then, the company should priority identify major external stakeholders which include many or all of the following: media, community, customers, investors, analysts, board, partners, distributors, suppliers or vendors, trade associations, unions, interest groups, retirees, competitors, government agencies, and the public at large. The major messages are created in the criteria of honesty, clearness, consistency, and meaningfulness. The spokespersons must be at the right level for the problem, must project a positive ethos, and should have received media training. Deciding on the most effective media or forum to ensure reaching the stakeholders is one of the critical components to develop the external relations. Timing of the external message can be also critical. In monitoring the results, there are two common methods used to obtain feedback from the external stakeholders as follow: focus group and surveys.

In building and maintaining a positive corporate image, the company can design campaigns to promote as a whole, carry out ambitious program to champion product quality and customer service, maintain systems to screen employee activities for reputation side effects, demonstrate sensitivity to the environment, hire internal communication staff and retain public relations firms, and demonstrate “corporate citizenship”.

In working with the news media, the company should understand the media’s role and importance, decide when to talk to the media, and prepare for and deliver a media interview.

The company might face with the crisis situation so the following guidelines will help company to respond appropriately.
1. Develop a general crisis communication plan and communicate it
2. Once the crisis occurs, respond quickly,
3. Make sure you have the right people ready to respond and that they all respond with the same message
4. Put yourself in the shoes of your audience
5. Do not overlook the value of the web
6. Revisit your crisis communication plan frequently
7. Build in a way to monitor the coverage
8. Perform a postcrisis evaluation

Leadership Chapter 11 : Leadership Through Strategic Internal Communication

This chapter talked about the effective internal communication leadership which is an important tool for management to direct the organization and motivate employee. This chapter also focused on establishing leadership through strategic communication with the employees. They start with recognizing the strategic role of employee communication. We should ensure the employee communication connects to the strategic objectives. We should assess the employee communication effectiveness in order to coach or encourage them for accomplishing the organization’s goal. In the effective internal communication stage, there are the core factors as follow:
- Supportive management
- Targeted messages
- Effective media/forum
- Well-positioned staff
- Ongoing assessment
We need the missions and vision to strengthen the internal communication by understanding the importance of mission and vision, defining missions and visions, ensuring the mission and vision are effective, and building an effective mission and vision. For Building an Effective mission and vision, we might start with create initial draft, then clarify the meaning. The mission and vision need to be concise. The strategic objectives are developed to make the vision. Cascading meeting is the way to test the employee about the mission and vision. It might start with the upper level of the organization broken into functions or division and then give way to cross-level, functional, or divisional meetings. Next step is the designing and implementing effective change communication which should begin with determining the scope of the change communication program, and then structuring a communication program for major change.