BazermanMoore

166 Chapter 9: Making Rational Decisions in Negotiations
It is worth repeating that no strategy eliminates the need to eventually divide value;
any negotiation advice is incomplete if it fails to deal explicitly with the claiming dimension.
Armed with these strategies for creating and claiming value, negotiators should be
able to improve their performance on both dimensions.
SUMMARY AND CRITIQUE
This chapter has introduced a number of methods for increasing the potential for successful
negotiations. First, we outlined the decision-analytic approach, which focuses
on information collection—namely, the importance of establishing reservation points,
exploring the underlying interests of the parties, and weighting the relative importance
of these interests. We discussed the need to think about creating and claiming value,
and we introduced the concept of building on differences (such as estimates of future
outcomes, risk preferences, and time preferences) as a strategy for uncovering trades.
We also outlined six strategies for unlocking value in a negotiation. These include building
trust, asking questions, strategically disclosing information, discussing multiple issues
simultaneously, making multiple offers simultaneously, and searching for postsettlement
settlements. Together, these techniques provide a prescriptive framework
for thinking rationally about real-world negotiations.
As teachers of negotiation, we have noticed that students who fail to thoroughly
prepare for a simulation are routinely clobbered by their opponent. The assumption
that good intuition will allow you to sail through negotiation is simply wrong; preparation
is critical. High-quality preparation requires you to reflect on a number of simple
but important questions. This sample list of questions will not cover every negotiation
situation, but it is a good place to start:
1. What is your BATNA?
2. What is your reservation price?
3. What are the issues in this negotiation?
4. How important is each issue to you?
5. What do you think the other party’s BATNA is?
6. What do you think their reservation price is?
7. How important do you think each issue is to them?
8. Are there viable trades that create value?
9. Are you and the other party in disagreement about future events? If so, is a
bet viable?
10. How will you go about identifying the information that you do not currently
know?
While answering these questions does not guarantee success, it will improve your odds.
As we saw in the first eight chapters, ours is not a fully rational world, particularly
when it comes to our own decision-making processes. A central lesson of this book is
that even when you are presented with rational advice, like the decision-analytic