Negotiation Skill

Negotiation Skills

Introduction

Everybody negotiate in his or hers personal and professional lives and it is an important part of the competitive modern life. Negotiations can occur over dealing with people, business contracts, official matters, service, buying products and relationships. As James Poon (1998, p. 41) expressed that negotiation is a basic human activity. The world is like a giant negotiating table that person can negotiate many different things in different situation.

Definitions

Kozicki (1993, pp. xiii - xiv) views negotiation is a simple procedure that basically a solution of two sides sitting down to reach a mutually satisfying agreement, and sees negotiation as being the art of reaching an agreement by resolving differences through creativity. Heller (1998, cited in De Janasz, Dowd, Shneider, 2002) reviewed that negotiation involves two or more parties who each have something the other wants and attempt to reach an agreement through a process of bargaining when all parties have both shared and opposed interests. Putnam and Roloff (1992, p. 3) share this view but have further describing that each party also can block the other from attaining the goal. As to Scott (1981, p. 3) definition, the term of negotiation is a form of meeting between two parties with an objective to reach agreement in which both parties move towards an outcome which is good in both joint interest.

Negotiation Approaches

Negotiation theorists have pointed out several approaches to negotiation. Fisher, Ury and Patton (1991) not only distinguish between positional bargaining, which is competitive, and also make the distinction between soft, hard, and principled negotiation, the latter of which is based on cooperative principles, which look out for oneself as well as one's opponent.

James Poon (1998, p. 42) describing in a different manner that negotiation can be classified as distributive or integrative, in which distributive is defined as competitive win/lose bargaining, but the second type is a more productive type of negotiation. In distributive bargaining strategy, it only focuses on achieving immediate goals with little regard for building future relationship, whilst in integrative bargaining strategy, the goal is to collaborate and generate one or more creative solutions so there's a chance to both parties to achieve the primary objectives (De Janasz, Dowd, Shneider, 2002).

In principled negotiation, Fisher, Ury and Patton (1991) are aim to get agreement that is beneficial to both parties. It focused on five fundamental principles of negotiation1: 1) separate the people from the problem, 2) focus on interests, not positions, 3) invent options for mutual gain, 4) insist on objective criteria, and 5) know oneself BATNA (Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement).

The Phases of Negotiation Process

All negotiations are different. Simple negotiations need not require extensive negotiation process; however, when negotiations involve complex issues, negotiators shall consider using