Page 216 - DMGT519_Conflict Management and Negotiation Skills

Conflict Management and Negotiation Skills

Notes Negotiation Journal article, made an argument that scholars and practitioners should not
think about negotiations or conflict resolution in such terms. These metaphors, he noted,
are primarily rooted in the military and sports of Western cultures where they may be
appropriate. They are not, however, appropriate in describing negotiations. Greenhalgh
listed five disadvantages to using the win-lose metaphor in describing negotiations:
1. The win-lose metaphor carries a zero-sum quality, which is not a useful context for
a negotiation settlement that contains a mutual gain for both parties— or else why
would they agree on the deal? Furthermore, “win-lose” implies that one party has
gained something at the expense of the other party, which is not always the case. In
addition, the win-win metaphor is not useful because it cannot be used without also
using the win-lose metaphor.

2. Sports metaphors emphasize rules rather than relationships. Thus, negotiators may
believe that any tactic may be tolerated as long as a rule or law is not violated, even
though the long-term relationship between the parties may be damaged.
3. Ethical considerations tend to be subordinated when sports metaphors are applied,
and therefore the level of trust between the parties may be severely damaged.

4. Sports metaphors induce participants to focus on the immediate conflict rather than
the long-term perspective. Sports contests are isolated events and the score is set at
zero at the start of each contest, whereas most negotiations involve parties that have
a continuing relationship, and thus the concepts of “winning” and “losing” are less
useful.
5. The win-lose metaphor induces negotiators to strive to fractionate the other party
and throw its group into disarray. This practice may, however, make it more difficult
to negotiate an agreement because, once divided, the other party will have more
difficulty evaluating alternatives and agreeing to a settlement.

Try to avoid the trap of thinking in terms of a sports metaphor such as win-lose or win-win,
which can lead you to visualize a bargaining situation in counterproductive ways. Instead,
terms such as mutual gain or problem-solving or cooperative agreement might lead to a positive
visualization of the bargaining situation.
Source: From Leonard Greenhalgh, “The Case Against Winning in Negotiations,” Negotiation Journal 3
(April 1987): 167–173.

Task Elucidate the following statements:
1. Integrative bargaining can be more easily utilized if the parties involved value a
long-term positive relationship.
2. Interest-based bargaining has a different philosophy from that of distributive or
traditional integrative methods of negotiation.

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