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15.667 | Spring 2001 | Graduate

# Negotiation and Conflict Management

Some of the readings are drawn from these textbooks, which may also be useful for reference in the future. I assign all of Lewicki, and all of Ury. I assign brief sections of Moore. You might consider buying it if you will often be a “third party”.

- Lewicki, Roy J., David M. Saunders, and John W. Minton. Essentials of Negotiation. 2nd ed. Irwin, 2000.
- Moore, Christopher W. The Mediation Process. 2nd ed. Jossey-Bass, 1996.
- Ury, William. Getting Past No: Negotiating with Difficult People. Bantam, 1992.
- Fisher, Roger, and William Ury. Getting to Yes. Arrow, 1991.

The cases mentioned below often have documents and instructions available on the lecture notes page. Other suggested books about negotiation can be found in the related resources section.

SES # | TOPICS | READINGS
--- | --- | ---

1 | Introduction and Course Overview | If you have time, read as much of Essentials of Negotiation as you can – at least read Chapters 1, 2, 3 and 4 which introduce the book. If you have read the book before, this edition has been revised, so – please read it again. 15.667 will make more sense if you have read these chapters – and there is a lot of writing due the following week.

2 | What Kind of Negotiator am I? | Read: Rowe, Mary. Options and Choice for Conflict Resolution in the Workplace. In Negotiation: Strategies for Mutual Gain. Edited by Lavinia Hall. Sage Publications, Inc., 1993, pp. 105-119. The Exercise self-assessment is at the end. Be sure you have read the first four chapters of Essentials of Negotiation. Case this week: Stratego Aero I.

3 | Distributive and Mixed Motive Bargaining | Read: Chapter 7, Ethics in Negotiation, in Essentials of Negotiations. In today’s class we are concerned with ethics, and with classic, zero-sum negotiating problems – the gain of one is the loss of the other. Chapter 3 – be sure you have read it – discussed the nature of distributive bargaining. Case: Prepare your role in the Terry and Josephine case. If you can, prepare together with anyone who is playing the same role as you. Passages from: Cutcher-Gershenfeld, Joel, Robert McKersie, and Richard Walton, Strategies for Negotiating Fundamental Change, August 1996 regarding forcing and fostering organizational change.

4 | Integrative and Mixed Motive Bargaining | This week there is a lot of reading, writing and case preparation but nothing to hand in. Read: Essentials of Negotiations – you should have read through chapter 4 – read chapter 5 on communications, and chapter 6 on power and leverage; Fisher & Ury, Getting To Yes, pp. 5-14 and 101-111 in the Class Notes; and the short guidelines in the Class Notes on progressive discipline for unsatisfactory performance. These readings explore the possibilities of win-win and mixed motive solutions, give background on communications in negotiation and lay out a mixed motive protocol if you have to fire someone. (Letting someone go usually should not be “win-lose”). Optional Reading Assignment about Power: Read Orson Scott Card’s, Enders Game, Tor, 1977, science fiction, Hugo & Nebula awards. If you are able to read Enders Game, please consider analyzing the story briefly in your journal in terms of negotiations theory. What sources of power are used by the major actors? In real life, what sources of power are available to someone who is young, and to someone who appears to be otherwise much under the control of senior people? Are these sources of power available to you? Attractive to you? Under the circumstances, was there any alternative strategy available? There are about three dozen very serious armed conflicts underway in the world today. Is the Enders Game strategy inevitable? Is the use of force ethical, according to the ethical standards you hold for yourself? Cases: Prepare your role in Barrister, Counselor, Solicitor and Avocat, and your role in The Yearly Review. Please prepare together with anyone who is playing the same role as you.

5 | Competitive and Cooperative Styles and Do Gender or Culture Make a Difference? | This week there is yet more reading but at least it is about effectiveness. You might want to read the assignments in order, and read the cross-cultural articles next week if you get bogged down. Read: Williams, Gerald. Legal Negotiation and Settlement, West, 1983, pp. 1-69; and Menkel-Meadow, Carrie. Teaching about Gender and Negotiation: Sex, Truths, and Videotape, Negotiation Journal, October 2000. If you will be negotiating with people outside your own culture, please also read the two Sloan Management Review articles on Negotiating with ‘Romans’ by Stephen E. Weiss, Winter 1994, Vol. 35, No. 2, pp. 51-61; and Essentials of Negotiations, chapter 8 on global negotiation. If you are especially interested in gender questions, read Deborah Kolb’s new book Shadow Negotiations: How Women Can Master the Hidden Agendas That Determine Bargaining Success, Simon & Schuster, 2000. Almost all students are interested in Gerald Williams’ classic book on effectiveness in each strategy. Williams believes: “A negotiator’s effectiveness is not determined by the pattern he or she follows, (i.e. cooperative vs. competitive) but rather by what he or she does with that pattern.” – passage from Williams, Gerald. Legal Negotiation and Settlement, West, 1983. Case: Tax Books by Prof. Gerald Williams, Brigham Young University. (negotiated two on two)

6 | Negotiating in Context | Read: If you did not get to the other chapters of Essentials of Negotiations in the last two weeks, try to read them now please. Also read Goleman, Emotional Intelligence, pp. 35-45 and pp. 148-163, found in the Class Notes. This book reviews a lot of evidence that managerial success depends primarily on social skills. Please be thinking in all your current negotiations, about the importance of your having a strategy, on the importance of preparing for current negotiations and on converting win-lose to win-win. Cases: Telemachus Technology and Coalition Game: Susskind, Lawrence. Three-Party Coalition Exercise. Available from the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School Clearinghouse.

| Holiday Week | Optional Reading: Enders Game, as suggested earlier and/or Joan Slonczewski’s A Door Into Ocean, Avon, 1986, science fiction, which presents a profoundly different view – from Enders Game – of sources of power in dealing with armed conflict. As with Enders Game, this book may interest you especially in the light of hostilities in many parts of the world. If you do read either or both books, please consider writing in your journal your responses to the questions I asked for Session 4, with respect to Enders Game.

7 | Origins of Conflict – Dispute Prevention – Delegating Conflict Management to the Disputant | Read: Felstiner, William L. F., Richard L. Abel, and Austin Sarat. The Emergence and Transformation of Disputes: Naming, Blaming, Claiming…. Law and Society Review 15, no. 3-4, 1980-81, pp. 631-654; and Rowe, Mary. Helping People Help Themselves: An Option for Complaint Handlers. Negotiation Journal 6, no. 3, July 1990, pp. 239-248. These readings discuss how conflicts begin and develop and how they can be handled at the lowest possible level. The Rowe paper is essential for the second Perceived Injurious Experience (PIE) Little Paper. NB: usually half the class hates the Felstiner, Abel & Sarat article. If you are in that half, please skim it anyway? It is a well-known classic and the article may grow on you if you become interested in dispute prevention at home or at work or if you find yourself dealing with difficult conflicts. If as a manager you will be handling personnel complaints of any kind, skim the MIT Guide to Dealing with Harassment which describes a systems approach to complaint-handling with respect to one broad class of workplace issues. See especially the “Quick Guide,” chapter 3.

8 | Your Employer’s Dispute Resolution and Complaint Handling System | Read: The excerpt from Cavanagh, Thomas D. Business Dispute Resolution: Best Practices in System Design and Case Management. South-Western College Pub, 1999; and Rowe, Mary, and Corinne Bendersky. Workplace Justice, Zero Tolerance and Zero Barriers: Getting People to Come Forward in Conflict Management Systems, in Negotiations and Change, from the Workplace to Society, edited by Thomas Kochan and Richard Locke, Cornell University Press, 2002. If you did not have a chance to read the MIT Guide to Dealing with Harassment, consider skimming at least chapter 3 for today. Contemporary best practice suggests that employers should not only offer conflict resolution options, but build integrated dispute resolution systems. (Was there an integrated system at the place you worked before?) If you will be working in an arena where there are “zero tolerance” policies for illegal behavior, the Rowe article discusses one reason why zero tolerance policies are problematic unless embedded in an integrated system.

| Holiday Week | Optional Assignment: Rent the video The Return of Martin Guerre. The question is, whom can you believe? Is it possible to tell if someone is lying? If so – how will you do it as a manager? If not – how will you manage?

9 | Conciliation and Mediation | Read: Moore, How Mediation Works (Chapter 2), pp. 41-77, and Designing a Plan for Mediation (Chapter 6) and Building Trust and Cooperation (Chapter 7), pp. 141-192. If you did not buy this text, you may find copies on Reserve. These readings lay out elements of strategy, tactics, and process for non-adjudicatory, third party intervention. In your next job you will almost certainly have to function as a third party intermediary. You may also be helping colleagues and bosses, and you may be supervising subordinates, as they mediate informally or formally. You are also very likely to be engaged in mediation on behalf of your employer, since so many companies are now switching over to using internal and external mediation in at least some employment and contract disputes. So – read as much of this book as you can. If you are not interested, you may find the book dry and too thorough. In this case, skim whatever you can stand of it and remember this book next year as soon as you need to know the material, because you will find everything here. If you are too totally swamped to read anything, then study the Moore chart and then apply it to Stratego I and II to prepare for the mediation. The Moore chart is Figure 2.1 from: Moore, Christopher W, The Mediation Process: Practical Strategies for Resolving Conflict, 2nd ed., Jossey-Bass, 1996. Case: Prepare Stratego Aero II. To do so, you should have re-read Stratego Aero I as well as your Stratego II Secret Instructions. Prepare together with someone who is playing the same role as you and please prepare carefully. Otherwise you will mess up your colleagues’ role-playing, and they will write me fierce notes about requiring people to prepare better.

10 | Investigation, Arbitration and Exceptionally Difficult People (Double Class, 6 hours) | Read: Lewicki, chapter 9, and the Halliburton Dispute Resolution Program. These readings illuminate dealing with difficult situations, and third party intervention. The Halliburton program is a benchmark example of an integrated system with the option of outside arbitration. It is now seen as best practice – with one big shortcoming in my view – namely, “imposed” arbitration. (Are you willing to sign away your ability to sue your employer as a condition of employment?) Read: Fein, Robert A., Bryan Vossekuil, and Gwen A. Holden, Threat Assessment: An Approach to Prevent Targeted Violence, National Institute of Justice: Research in Action, September 1995, pp. 1-7 (taking a systems approach to targeted violence) as preparation for the evening presentation. This article is also available at the U.S. Secret Service web site. Cases: Certified Public Accountants, Inc. (theft); Discussion of cases distributed in class (drugs, whistleblowers, and a convicted employee).

11 | More Negotiating with Difficult People | Read: The third text for the course: Ury, Getting Past No: Negotiating with Difficult People. My recommendation is that you read the whole book – it is short and easy to read, and arguably one of the two or three best books of its type in negotiations. Read also Levinson, Harry. The Abrasive Personality, Boston, MA: Harvard Business Review, 1978. These readings suggest ideas and modes that you may find helpful if you know anyone who is a difficult person. The Ury book can be remarkably helpful if you can get both parties to a dispute – two of your colleagues, for example – to read it. By the same token, if you know an abrasive person, the Levinson article may be useful – and usually not offensive – to such a person. (Abrasive personalities usually do not see themselves as abrasive and are therefore sometimes very interested, if puzzled, to see the main elements of what other people see as abrasiveness spelled out.) Optional – if you have time: Ekman, Paul, and Maureen O’Sullivan. Who Can Catch a Liar? American Psychologist 46, no. 9, September 1991, pp. 913-920 – this article got a lot of attention during the Clarence Thomas Hearings; and Smoller, Jordan W. The Etiology of Childhood. This last article illuminates the point that “things are not necessarily what they seem.”

## Course Info

##### Instructor

- Prof. Mary Rowe

##### Departments

- Sloan School of Management

##### As Taught In

Spring 2001

##### Level

Graduate

##### Topics

- Business
  - Business Ethics
  - Industrial Relations and Human Resource Management
  - Management
- Social Science
  - Communication

##### Learning Resource Types

notes Lecture Notes
assignment Written Assignments
co_present Instructor Insights
Podcasts

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