Page 95 - DMGT519_Conflict Management and Negotiation Skills

Unit 4: Negotiation

3. Acceptance/Rejection Decision Notes
4. Prolonging Negotiation and Renegotiation
To achieve win-win situation in negotiation, the best strategy should include—providing your
opponent information about your priorities and preferences (not your BATNA); unbundling
issues; making package deals (not single-issue offers); making multiple offers simultaneously;
structuring contingence contracts that capitalise on differences in negotiators’ beliefs,
expectations, and attitudes; and using pre and post-settlement strategies. In their attempts to
expand the pie, negotiators should not forget about claiming resources.
Union-management collective bargaining has often been used as a classic example of the
distributive bargaining process. Often, the tendency for the parties to use collective bargaining
rests on a long history of perceived abuse and mistrust on both sides of the table. But recent
work shows that integrative negotiation can be successful even in this context. Post and Bennett
(1994) report the results of a five-step process that, when introduced into a union-management
negotiation, successfully reduced grievances from 40 per year, under the previous contract, to
two in 18 months under the new contract. It significantly reduced anger and hostility between
the parties, and enhanced the spirit of cooperation in the plant. Those five steps were as follows:
1. A commitment phase, occurring twelve and six months before the expiration of the current
contract, during which the parties commit to participate in a collaborative process, including
commitments to harmonise negotiation philosophy, negotiation process, and articulate
the respective interests of the parties.
2. An explanation phase, occurring one month before contract expiration, during which the
parties hold their first meeting, present their respective proposals to each other, introduce
supporting documentation, and set a time-table for remaining meetings.
3. A validation phase, occurring two to four weeks prior to contract expiration, in which the
parties gather information from employees and employers about the validity of the interests
expressed in the opening statements. This information is used to generate a collective
consensus about the relative importance and priority of the interests to the constituencies
of both groups.

4. A prioritisation phase, occurring two weeks prior to contract expiration, in which the
parties work together to develop a joint list of priorities based on the data. This process is
often facilitated by a mediator, who uses the commitments generated in the commitment
phase to help the parties represent their priorities genuinely and candidly.
5. A negotiation phase, occurring one week prior to the contract expiration, in which the
parties meet in a series of frequent and intensive gatherings to negotiate a resolution to
the prioritised list of interests. Once again, this process is often facilitated by a mediator,
whose role is to vigorously ask questions of the parties, hold them to their agenda, and
ensure that the negotiations proceed in an open and trusting atmosphere that this process
requires the ongoing participation of a mediator, who acts as a referee and as a monitor of
the parties’ commitment to stay with an integrative process. Whether the parties could
learn to trust each other to sustain such a process without an active third party role is still
a matter of debate.

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