Page 81 - DMGT519_Conflict Management and Negotiation Skills

Unit 4: Negotiation

time to take a perspective approach or exchange information. However, it has been noticed Notes
that as the time for closing the deal approaches, the frequency of concessions increases.
This is called monotone decrease.
A negotiation dance also deals with last-clear-chance offer, a tendency to reach the maximum
limit and then to say ‘take it or leave it’. This seems to be a common behaviour pattern
when a negotiation has lasted for a long time and individual/parties involved have
become exhausted and tried. However, in this situation if the last chance offers is accepted
then one can sign an agreement. But if the last-clear-chance offer is not accepted and
negotiation comes to end, then the individual/party that makes last chance offer tends to
lose. The reason is that the individual/party which has made the offer has been able to
bring the adversary to a position closer to its own, but this benefit is lost if the negotiation
does not lead to an agreement.
3. Influence Mechanisms: Although negotiation is supposed to be fair and reasonable, still
individuals/parties often use mechanisms of influence to get the agreement in their favour.
They may use following power system to get a favourable deal.
(i) Referent Power: It means dropping names of influential people or identifying with
them during the negotiation to suggest that their relationship with these people
should be taken into account in the negotiation settlement.

(ii) Expert Power: It refers to using their expertise on the issues or using jargon unfamiliar
to other individual/party, thereby indicating that they know more about the issue
and hence their point of view is the best.
Additionally, they may either offer non-specified benefits to make them agree to their proposal
or threaten the other individual/party should it disagree to their proposals. However, it should
be noted that the other individual/party could be equally capable to use the same rewards and
threats and may respond to threat with greater threat and reward with better reward. Or it may
simply ignore the rewards and threats and walk away from negotiation, denying the benefits
accrued so far. The benefits here are the concessions made so far.

4.11 Post-negotiation Understanding

People often think that once an agreement is reached, the act of negotiation is completed.
However, the fact is that negotiation helps in finding a solution to the conflict. Once the solution
has been found, it has to be implemented. The solution is only the beginning, it has to be seen
that negotiation reaches its logical conclusion by being implemented. Therefore, post-negotiation
understanding requires a blue print to put the agreements in action. Hence, the following
agenda has to be discussed, negotiated, and agreed upon:
1. Implementation Plan: Agreeing on an issue in negotiation leads to putting the agreement
into an action plan. The exact nature of the plan must be sorted out during the negotiation
to reduce any future misunderstanding. It should include the course of action, resource
generation and resource utilisation, a time table and indices for monitoring, and evaluation
of the success of the course of action taken. If such an agreement is not made then chances
are that while implementing the agreements arrived at in negotiation the need may arise
to go back to the negotiation table.
2. Role Responsibilities: In addition to the blueprint suggested above, it is also imperative to
delineate the exact roles that the individual/parties in negotiation, or their representatives,
would be performing. Such an attempt helps in allocating responsibilities, authority, and
accountability. It also saves time and energy by avoiding unnecessary duplication of
efforts and streamlines the need for coordination between the two individuals/parties in
negotiation.

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