Table of Contents
01. Introduction to negotiation 1
02. Definition of negotiation and characteristics 2
04. Emotional intelligence and negotiation 3
05. Innovation, creativity and negotiation 5
06. Ethical behavior in negotiation 5
07. Relationships in negotiating world 6
08. Global and multi-cultural negotiation 7
Introduction to negotiation
It is assumed that the heart of negotiation is the process of giving and taking back process used to reach an agreement. It is therefore will become a complex social process of which most of the important factors that supports a negotiation do not occur during the negotiation. They usually occur before the negotiation. Negotiation can be done in many aspects. It can occur among people around the world as an every-day activity. Sometimes it may occur via media such as TV and Internet. Further it can occur in disciplinary level such as social science, economics, law, political science and etc. Each aspect has its own method and theory of explaining elements of negotiating. This process is similar to the Preble of blind men trying to describe the elephant by touching and feeling to hands (Roy J. Lewicki, Bruce Barry, David M. Saunders, 2007). However, though negotiations happens on daily basis, conducting an effective negotiation is not quite easy. Especially the negotiations happens between buyers and sellers in the context of commerce will end up being either profitable or loss making deals.
It is also important to understand that negotiation is not relevant for all times. Because we will not be given options to negotiate. Understanding the best moment to initiate a negation will always lead to a success.
Definition of negotiation and characteristics
Negotiation is the reconciliation process between two or more parties to console each positions. This can be peace negotiation between two nations, price negotiation between buyers and sellers, salary negotiation between employees and employers, friends negotiate where to have dinner, lawyers negotiate to settle claims before the court hearing and etc. hence, negotiation is not a process which salesperson or skilled diplomat does but the rest of the world does in everyday life.
There are few reasons to have negotiations among people. To agree on how to share limited resources, to create something new which neither party could do it alone and to resolve a dispute between two parties are famous reasons around the world.
Although there are several types of negotiations, there are few common characteristics where all the negotiations consists with. 1. There are two or more parties in a negotiation – negotiations are usually happens between parties with the objective of resolving a conflicting matter which is favorable to both parties. 2. There are conflicts of needs or desires between two parties – there should be a subject matter to be resolved among each party. Without a conflictions, there won’t be an argument or a negotiation. 3. Negotiate by choice – by negotiating, each party thinks that they can get a better deal than just accepting the offer given by the other party. Negotiation is largely a voluntary process, even if someone does not have an option to negotiate, they tend to negotiate up to a certain extent. People negotiates because they think that they can improve their outcome or the result better than just accepting the offer from the other party.
Styles and strategies
Leadership skills are essential factor for a successful negotiation. Skills developed through continuous improvement in the process of negotiation will improve the critical thinking aptitudes and effective communication skills (McClendon, 2009). Negotiation styles are common for all type of negotiations. 1. One time negotiation – this style ensures that maximum outcome within a minimum time frame. Results of one time negotiation is predictable in nature. 2. Continuous negotiation – these type of negotiations are famous in business environment. Client and supplier relationship and business and customer relationships are classic examples for these type of negotiations. Although the results of these type of negotiations are unpredictable, there are possibilities of making the best out of the negotiation as it runs for a longer period. 3. Direct negotiation – this is where the two parties meets each other in person to settle subject matter. 4. Indirect negotiation – where the negotiation conducts by an intermediary party such as mediator or representative (Ilana Zohar. 2015).
Tactics and strategies are to be used constantly in the short run depending on the condition of the negotiation, situation and the power of the opponent (Ilana Zohar. 2015). These strategies are often useful to reveal the opponents hidden agendas.
Emotional intelligence and negotiation
As the world changed, the leadership styles has also changed in order to cater to changing needs and wants. Goleman defined that there are few main components of emotional intelligence in effective leadership. After performing a various research into about the application of effective leaders in many multi-level organizations by taking in to the account of their personal capabilities, he came up with 3 components that make up the effective leader (Goleman 1998):
Technical skills (budgeting, Financial Accounting and Management skills)
Cognitive abilities (Systems thinking and analytical reasoning and long-term vision)
Emotional intelligence (Change management and adaptively)
He observed that the higher that a person goes in the corporate ladder, the higher he or she should be emotionally intelligence than having technical and cognitive skills. He further mentioned that the quality of effective leadership is demonstrated by the effectiveness in application of emotional intelligence capabilities in to practice. In order to demolish the confusion as to why he added technical skills as well as cognitive skills are also important for effective leadership by stating that those technical and cognitive skills will be entry level capabilities for those leadership positions. However the effectiveness will be measured by the way he or she being able to handle change management situations and application of emotional intelligence in to practice (Goleman, 1998).
Ever since the ancient times, people started exploring the relationship between our emotions and decisions that we made. (Forgas, 1995). However, recent history witness that these researches have made a significant progression in this studies. Those studies then taken in to the account and presented to the world by proving that emotional intelligence is the key for effective leadership as the current world have evolved in many ways and the emotional intelligence is the key to capture those changes and apply them to effective decision making process (Van Kleef, 2009). In his principle, emotions as a social information, (Van Kleef 2009) states that leaders can control some of the emotions of their staff in their every-day life style. He further stated that if this change can be interpreted well in advance, these can be used to understand the position of other parties emotions in a negotiation. Change in body language will witness the likelihood of accepting the negotiation and achieving both parties desired goals and will benefit with all parties. (Hillebrandt and Barclay, 2017).
He further stated that even for the most skilled negotiators are concerned about the unpredictability of other party’s emotions. The main reason is that the even body language change of a person will not always represents the emotional change that they suffer within themselves.
Disregarding these emotional changes due to complexity is not the solution for consider. An effective leader will always try to understand the situation of the other party by observing the behavioral changes in negotiation situation. Making the other party clam in all the possible situations will enable both the parties to end up with a creative and practical outcome in the negotiation (Leary, Pillemer and Wheeler, 2013).
By any chance, if the other party could not control the emotional change, there is a possibility of the negotiation begin end up without a conclusion (Der Foo et al., 2004). In distinction to this (Diamond 2013) states that it is always better not to show emotional change by both parties. He believes that this method will also ensure an effective negotiation. He further stated that if one party has a consideration that the other party is not trust worthy, it is not worthwhile to have a negotiation at all (Diamond 2013).
Unintended emotional changes can often leads to understand the behavioral changes and these changes will define the succession of negotiation. (Ekman, 2003).
Innovation, creativity and negotiation
Modern technology allows to facilitate various business possibilities both in the business process as well as the communication. This has impacted to the business in both good and bad ways (Kęstutis Peleckis. 2013). Technological advancement in the business communication has enabled businesses to communicate effectively all over the world so that the companies can maintain communication between parties in an effective manner. On the other hand, this distant made parties do not allow to negotiate fully.
Negotiators ability to develop innovative solutions is intrinsically linked with the successfulness of the negotiation (Thompson, 2005). Therefore identifying the critical success factors in a negotiation is essential to develop innovative solution to the world. In the context of integrative negotiating, successful negotiation will not only benefited by the both sides, but also increase the value of the agreement (Galinsky and Mußweiler, 2001; Park et al., 2013).
Ethical behavior in negotiation
In the current business context, being able to handle complex ethical dilemmas has become quite important (Kline, 2010). Ethical behavior in business negotiation will increase the social well begin of the company as well as the long term sustainability. As Volkema (2001) mentioned, hiding information from the negotiation is one of the prominent issue that took place in a world negotiation and yet this practice is deemed to be an unethical behavior in the context of business.
Relationships in negotiating world
Relationship and trust are often considered as the base for a healthy agreement. In fact, relationships are quite important rather than laws, regulations and court systems. Jewish merchants in Europe, often acted as the bankers, lenders and facilitators for commerce throughout the continent. Their network of relationships were strong enough so that anyone who is willing to do business in can obtain their service in a secure and trustworthy manner.it was the trust that they had built over the time by sharing values (Putnam, 1996).
Relationships is a significant factor that affects the negotiation decisions because there should be another party in order to have an effective communication in a negotiation. Relationships affect trust, justice and reputation in a negotiation process. (Salacuse 1998) stated there are few conditions that cen affect the relationship in a negotiation. First each party spend time to understand the counter party to get an understanding and to build trustful relationship. Secondly it should continue the relationship throughout the negotiation procedure. Each party should seek for third-party support when there are disagreements (Greenhalgh and Gilkcy, 1993). However it is not an easy task to understand which type of a relationship will ensure a worthwhile result in a negotiation. There are some researches that has proven distant relationships developed better solutions (Fry, Firestone, and Williams, 1983).
Trust is a crucial element in every negotiation relationship (McAllister, 1995). Reputation is the recording individuals abandon in the past with the other moderator. One individual can have distinctive reputation among various gathering of individuals since individuals may consult in different path in different conditions. Reputation made with great verbal exchange make passionate responses in a positive way while awful informal exchange may shape negative enthusiastic responses (Goates, 2008). In the examinations about associations Justice acts a noteworthy job. Employees dependably make contentions about unjustifiable regularly scheduled pay or supporting gathering of individuals by the senior management. In like manner justice comprise of various structures (Deutsch, 1985). Inside a negotiating a relationship happens over time. Way of transforming a distributive transaction into an integrative one is for the gatherings to alternate in receiving an advantage or benefit. Inside a relationship, gatherings can do this effectively. A couple can consent to visit each other's folks on exchange occasions. Time turns into a vital variable in negotiating in affiliations; seeing how parties bundle or exchange off issues after some time might be critical to overseeing troublesome circumstances.
Global and multi-cultural negotiation
Culture is a collaboration of experience, beliefs, values, commination, knowledge, perception of time, and concepts that have been created within a group of people over the course of generation. It has been constructed over the time by the people and groups by their effort and interactions. Culture allows people to live upon each other in a society within a given geographical environment (Samovar and Porter, 1988). Multi-cultural negotiations are initiated with the intention of, jointly define the form of relationship, clearly outline the outcomes and results of the negotiation, discuss the common issues together, educating each party, reach mutually agreed conclusion and finally to implement and demonstrate what had discussed in the negotiation (Christopher W. Moore and Peter J. Woodrow, 2010). In a cross culture negotiation, the acceptability of a persuasion strategies used may considered as the difference between positive working relationship and deadlock.
Cross culture negotiation involves procedures which may reach to an agreement or to exchange some tangible things such as land, money, food, and behaviors or intangible things such as trust, apologies, respect, or a statement (Christopher W. Moore and Peter J. Woodrow, 2010).
There are few studies that took place to understand the cultural behavior when it comes to negotiation. One study analyzed the behaviors of between Chinese and Dutch negotiators (Henrik Agndal, 2007). It was reported that Chinese are more-angry and more anxious, and more uncertain about the result of the outcome of the negotiation, but, the Dutch is not as much as Chinese was. However, Dutch felt irritated, drive, less friendly and less quite (Ulijn, J., Rutkowski, A.F., Kumar, R. & Zhu, Y. 2005). It was also noted that in another study, Chinese understanding relating to the Dutch’s objective of negotiation is comparatively higher than the other way around (Kumar, R. & Worm, V. 2003).
Conclusion
Within a broad definition of negotiation, it was noted that the negotiation does not take place between two parties as a simple market bargaining process, but also negotiations takes place in complex global level to end wars and bring peace (xXXXXX). Moreover, negotiation is not a concept that is being used in business affairs but also in the everyday life. It is applied in almost all affairs in our lives. Effective negotiation demands a number of skills in order to become a good negotiator. Negotiation is the platform to interact with others. Therefore it is considered to be essential day to day activity in everyone’s life.
There are number of studies carried out in order to identify what sort of styles and characteristics that a negation consists with. It is understood that there are few unique features in any given negotiation in the world. Further it was noted that there are number of negotiation types as well as strategies.
In the context of emotional intelligence, there are several number of theories and concepts in relation to the emotional intelligence which signifies the importance of emotional intelligence. Being able to understand the behavioral changes within the parties when negotiating is a key capability of an effective leader. There are various number of concepts to be applied in order to understand the behavioral changes in negotiation parties.
The significance of emotional intelligence and effective leadership is now has become increasingly required subject matter in the context of corporate world. The research of the way how effective leadership will benefit by including research on emotional regulation and emotional labor while leadership studies will be able to understand better the emotional process of effective leaders (Humphrey, Burch and Adams, 2016).
It was also noted that with an effective negotiation, it is not only the two parties gets the benefits, but the rest of the world also will. I.e. negotiation between technological companies to come up with an innovative device which will ease up every-day life. By carefully implementing critical success factors in a negotiation this benefit can also be ensured.
Moreover, one of the critical factor which the succession of a negotiation will depend upon is the relationship with the other party. Trustworthiness is the key to ensure a healthier negotiation and long-lasting agreements.
Reference
McClendon B. (2009). Make it happen: negotiating effectively using timeless values. Western Carolina University, USA.
Henrik Agndal, 2007. Current trends in business negotiation research. Cross-cultural negotiation practices. Part II (2.2.5):16
Ulijn, J., Rutkowski, A.F., Kumar, R. & Zhu, Y. 2005. Patterns of feelings in face-to-face negotiation: a Sino-Dutch pilot study. Cross Cultural Management, 12(3):103-118.
Kumar, R. & Worm, V. 2003. Social capital and the dynamics of business negotiations between the northern Europeans and the Chinese. International Marketing Review, 20(3):262-285
Humphrey, R. H., Burch, G. F. and Adams L. L. (2016) ‘The Benefits of Merging Leadership Research and Emotions Research’. Frontiers in Psychology (Online) Available at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01022/full (Accessed 14/09/2019)
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