Page 255 - DMGT521_PROJECT_MANAGEMENT

Project Management

Notes 14.5.3 Competition

Business is increasingly competitive. This means that companies must be experts in competitive
environments. Managers not only need to function as advocates for their products and services,
but they must also recognise the competition that is inevitable between companies and, in some
cases, between units within a company. Understanding how to navigate this competitive
environment is essential for successful negotiation.

14.5.4 Information Age

The information age also provides special opportunities and challenges for the manager as
negotiator.

14.5.5 Globalization

Most managers must effectively cross cultural boundaries in order to do their jobs. Setting aside
obvious language and currency issues, globalisation presents challenges in terms of different
norms of communication. Managers need to develop negotiation skills that can be successfully
employed with people of different nationalities, backgrounds, and styles of communication.
Consequently, negotiators who have developed a bargaining style that works only within a
narrow subset of the business world will suffer unless they can broaden their negotiation skills
to effectively work with different people across functional units, industries, and cultures.
It is a challenge to develop a negotiation skill, set general enough to be used across different
contexts, groups, and continents, but specialised enough to provide meaningful behavioural
strategies in any given situation. This book helps to develop such skills.

!
Caution The dynamic, changing nature of business means that people must negotiate and
renegotiate their existence in organisations throughout the duration of their careers.

14.6 Preconditions for Negotiations

1. There must be two or more parties which have either conflict or disagreement.
2. There must be a perceived conflict of needs, positions and interests.

3. There must be interdependence so that the outcome must be satisfying to all parties.
4. Agreement must be required to be reached within reasonable time, so that it becomes
beneficial to parties.

5. The success of negotiation depends on the facts that:
(a) The issue is negotiable.
(b) The negotiators are not only taking but giving also.

(c) The negotiator’s parties must trust each other to some extent.
(d) There is a fear that failure may lead to crisis.

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