Page 218 - DMGT519_Conflict Management and Negotiation Skills

Conflict Management and Negotiation Skills

Notes benefit one party would harm the other party. Parties ideally seek to reach Level 3 agreements,
and therefore “leave nothing on the table.” Integrative negotiators do not stop at Level 1; they
seek to gain the benefits of higher, mutually beneficial levels 2 and In reality it is more likely
that negotiators can achieve Level 1 agreements in which both parties exceed their reservation
points and BATNAs or, through the development of new options, that they can negotiate Level
2 agreements that create additional value for both parties above the minimums achieved in
Level 1. Level 3 agreements can be described as pareto optimal* because they represent
improvements above Level 2 for both parties and achieve an agreement that cannot be improved
for one party without harming the other party. Thus the outcome of any level of an integrative
negotiation is superior to that of a distributive negotiation. In this units we will describe two
integrative processes. The first is the categorization method of integrative bargaining, and the
second method is commonly called interest-based bargaining (IBB).

Figure 10.1: A Pyramid Model of Integrative Agreements

Source: Leigh Thompson, The Mind and Heart of the Negotiator (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall,
1998), 47-48. Used by permission.

10.4 The Categorization Method

Figure 10.2: The Five Steps of the Categorization
Method of Integrative Bargaining

How does the integrative process work? First we will discuss the five steps of the categorization
method of integrative bargaining (see Figure 10.2). For the sake of learning the integrative
technique, we present this process as a linear process—one in which the first step must be

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