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ADR BulletinADR Bulletin
Volume 12 | Number 5 Article 4
1-1-2011
Negotiation: Strategy Style SkillsLaurence BoulleBond University, [email protected]
This Book Review is brought to you by ePublications@bond. It has been accepted for inclusion in ADR Bulletin by an authorized administrator ofePublications@bond. For more information, please contact Bond University's Repository Coordinator.
Recommended CitationBoulle, Laurence (2011) "Negotiation: Strategy Style Skills," ADR Bulletin: Vol. 12: No. 5, Article 4.Available at: http://epublications.bond.edu.au/adr/vol12/iss5/4
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ADR Bulletin of Bond University DRC
Nadja Alexander andJill Howieson
Negotiation: Strategy Style Skills2ed, 2010, LexisNexis
Butterworths, Chatswood
This is the second edition of a well-known Australian text, the first versionof which was authored 12 years ago byAlexander, Buckley and Rogers. Thisedition is fresh and vibrant, has newcontent and stimulus material, andadvances both knowledge and skills forpractitioners and students of theubiquitous subject-matter it addresses.Its philosophical assumption is that‘much of negotiation is learnable’, anapproach which at the outset deservestwo and a half hearty cheers.
An outline of the contents gives aninitial sense of the book’s approach tothe subject-matter. After the routineintroductory and definitional matters, itturns to three different approaches tonegotiation encountered in thepositional, interest-based andconstructive models of the process. Itthen devotes chapters to: preparing fornegotiations; the communication skillsinvolved in the process; interpersonalrequirements to assist the negotiator;and the impacts of emotion, cultureand ‘sex on the brain’ on bargaining.The final three chapters deal with:‘tough skills for tough negotiation’;multiparty and team negotiations; andten principles for constructivenegotiations, focusing on bothsuccessful and unsuccessful strategies.
The text is replete with hypotheticalscenarios which are referred to seriallyin each chapter and shorter vignetteswhich provide story-boards onnegotiation, each with their own‘lesson learned’. This brings thematerials to life. The tone varies fromthe scholarly to the folksy with bothweighty reflections and frothysuggestions, the text moving at a fast
pace through its various topics.Readers emerge with importantinformation about the brain and ears,and about sex and emotion, and it isleft to the learner to put together, bothphysically and psychologically, anegotiator of World Cup standard.
As a teaching and learning book, thetext has: valuable activities for learnersand teachers; figures and mapsreflecting important points; tables ofchecklists; questionnaires and models;cases and statutes; and a handsomeglossary of terms relevant to thediscipline. It covers well-worn areas onsome topics, and is fresh andinnovating in others.
The book also moves somewhatbeyond the skills genre and draws onthe literature in key areas, for examplein relation to Von Thun’s ‘four-in-onemessage’, Wade’s ‘risk analysis linkedto life choices’ and Luft and Ingram’s‘Johari Window’. It upgrades the textinto the skills-plus category.
However it is essentially a practicebook, a how-to-do-it and why for newand experienced negotiators, retainingthe inevitable lists and checklists offactors and activities relevant tonegotiation practice. All texts such asthis are challenged by the inherentdifficulties in the provision of lists ofpotential interventions or responses toother parties, as it is difficult to provide asense of priority or weighting in relationto the enumerated factors. It is not easyfor either authors or students to managethe use and utility of lists, and this iscertainly not an over-listy text.
Compared with the previous edition,this one is characterised by greaterattention to the ‘engine room’ ofnegotiation and bargaining, particularlyin Chapter 11. Of course there willalways be differences as to what isintrinsically engine-room material—whether it be patterns of concession-making, conditional linked bargaining,crossing the last gap, and so on.
BOOK REVIEW Laurence Boulle
Negotiation: Strategy Style Skills
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Personally I would have liked to seemore on CLB which is so critical togood bargaining and is a skill thatyoung students can master in their earlyintroduction to the world ofnegotiation, and which may well assistthem in buying their next mobile phone.However, there are many other engine-room factors which deserve the closestattention.
Those with experience in the field willbe drawn to the chapter on ‘Toughskills for tough negotiations’. This, afterall, is where the rubber meets the roadand all practitioners have anecdotes ofdifficult, troublesome or horrificnegotiation encounters. How do theauthors approach this challenging topic?They begin by providing a list of 19‘hardball’ tactics, such as bluffing ormaking extreme opening demands, andthen suggest alternatives to such tacticsand possible responses to them. This isextremely informative and practicalmaterial and could arguably have beenexpanded before leading into adiscussion of ethics and legal constraintson these behaviours. There followsanother good section on ‘overcomingimpasses’, beginning with typicalnegotiation traps, such as the anchoringand sunk-cost traps, followed bydiscussion of ‘impasse breakers’involving questions around process,relationships, substance and principle.Again, this is helpful information anddiscussion which arguably comes to anend too soon—but length is always afrustration in these pursuits.
In the larger picture, three issuescome to the reviewer’s mind inevaluating this kind of work, commentsnot restricted to the Alexander andHowieson text but to similarnegotiation works here and abroad.
The first is the place of empiricalscience in understanding negotiationbehaviour and in informing its skillsand techniques. The role of academicsand authors is to synthesise andexplicate reality and there is anincreasing availability of survey-basedevidence on negotiation behaviour andtactics. While skills manuals are foundin areas which will never becomewholly evidence-based, the questionarises as to the extent that writing on
negotiation should incorporate not onlysurvey evidence in disciplines such ascognitive psychology, organisationalbehaviour and neuro-science. After all‘negotiation’ is a construct abstractedfrom social behaviour which can beviewed differently from manydisciplinary perspectives. In some ofthese disciplines there is considerablescientific evidence on which to basepractice skills.
The second reflection concerns thesignificance and impact of the legalregulation of negotiation behaviour.This is now a commonplace factor inmany statutory, industry andorganisational contexts where statutes,contractual instruments, codes ofconduct and the like purport to shape,reward and sanction negotiationconduct. There are welcome referencesto some of the statutory contexts inwhich negotiation takes place, such asnative title and trade practiceslegislation in Australia; there isdiscussion of a celebrated case on theissue; and under the heading ‘hardballtactics and the law’ references are madeto several relevant statutory provisions.
Now, it is true that much of thestatutory and professional regulation ofnegotiation is focused on its ethicalcontours and on matters such as goodfaith, whereas this is a book with astrategy and skills focus. However, thelines between skills, ethics and conductrequirements are flimsy and it isarguable that even in texts of thisnature more attention could be paid,not only to the immense amount ofcurrent regulation of negotiationbehaviour, but the extent to which thishas an impact on actual practice—where such evidence is available.Moreover, as one of the authors haspointed out in another context, there isno such thing as a regulatory vacuumand the many dimensions of legal,industry, court and self-regulation aresignificant for this kind of text.
The third reflection relates to therelevance and usefulness of mediationpractice, regulation and evidence fornegotiation skills and techniques. Inmany respects, negotiation andmediation are conjoined twins inrelation to strategy, style, skills and
techniques. Mediation can be seen as anextrapolation of the negotiation process;and negotiation as a fundamentalelement of mediation systems. There isnow a wealth of survey material onmediation conduct—some of it focusingon specific aspects of negotiation, suchas forms of communication and thedynamics of the principal–agentrelationship—and there is arguablyscope for significant aspects ofmediation information to be used instandard negotiation texts. Ironically,the style and content of the book have adistinctly ‘mediational’ feel to them,despite the lack of specific references tomediation practice.
In relation to these three points, it can,of course, be easily countered that theirimplications would take the text into amuch more academic format, andcertainly make it longer. However, theyare issues which arise out of the cognatenature of negotiation and mediation andthe sometimes artificial constructs inacademic categorisation of disciplines.
One of the intriguing questions in thenegotiation field relates to the seeminglysimple question: What makes anegotiation successful? The question isposed in two ways in the book. InChapter 1, it is asked en passant in anactivity list, and teachers and learnersusing the book are left to their owndevices in relation to the answer. InChapter 4, the question is posed andanswered by the authors as follows:
[T]he parties feel they have an agreement
they can live with, the process was fair
and the parties felt they had a voice, the
parties would be prepared to negotiate
again in the future, the interests of
influential outsiders have been taken into
account, and there are positive impacts
on the relationship between the parties.
It is hard to dispute these factors, andthey provide an excellent set of goalsfor newcomers to the field. However,the question not only invites multiplelevels of responses; it raises theinteresting consideration as to whoseperspectives are pertinent in itsanswering. Both large insurers and long-term partners in abusive relationshipsmight, within their differing contexts,have very different answers to thequestion. The problem is that, whether
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ADR Bulletin, Vol. 12, No. 5 [2011], Art. 4
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Conflict Resolution Service (CRS)runs diverse Mediator ProfessionalDevelopment sessions in the ACT.For further information go to<www.crs.org.au> or email<[email protected]>.
The Bond University DisputeResolution Centre has upcoming a Basic Mediation course on theGold Coast on 28–31 July and inMelbourne on 20–23 October; and a five-day Family DisputeResolution course on 24–28 August.For more information email<[email protected]> or visit<www.bond.edu.au/faculties-colleges/dispute-resolution/index.htm>.
LEADR is holding MediationWorkshops in Adelaide on 15–19August; in Brisbane on 21–25 June;
Melbourne 31 May–4 June;
Canberra on 16–20 May; Perth on17–21 May; and Sydney on 20–24June. For further information go to<www.leadr.com.au/training.htm>.
ACDC is offering Mediation Training in Sydney on 23–27 May;27 June–1 July. Further details areavailable at <www.acdcltd.com.au>.
The Trillium Group is holding five-day Mediation Workshops inSydney on 13–17 September. See <www.thetrilliumgroup.com.au>for further details.
The 5th Asia-Pacific MediationForum (APMF) Event, Asia-PacificMediation Leadership Summit ‘From Talk to Action’ will be held inBangkok on 6–8 July 2011. Forfurther information go to<www.apmec.unisa.edu.au/apmf>.
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we like it or not, and despite theideology of constructive, principled orinterest-based bargaining, parties innegotiation are locked in a struggleand will have different priorities inrelation to outcomes. In many respectsthis question is one of the mostdifficult for a negotiation manual toaddress and it will ensure a rich futurefor the literature in this discipline.
Finally, the point should be madethat the depth, breadth and richness
of this book make it relevant to bothNegotiators and negotiators—theformal, board-room Negotiators andthe everyday managers, businesspersons, state officials and, dare onesay it, academics who make up thevast majority of negotiators. For allthese groups this is an invaluable text.
Laurence Boulle is Editor of the ADRBulletin and can be contacted at<[email protected]>.
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