PA 7332 Negotiations for Effective Management Syllabus Fall 2005 8/23/2005 MP2.208; Green 3.402 Tuesdays 7:00-9:45 pm Professor Marie Chevrier Teaching Assistant: Larry Terry Office: Green 3.204 Office: Green 2.512 Phone: 972-883-2727 Email: ldt041000@utdallas.edu Fax: 972-882 2735 Email: chevrier@utdallas.edu Website: www.utdallas.edu/~chevrier/ Office Hours: Wednesday 1-3 pm or by appointment. Course Description Students in this course will learn about negotiations, principally in the public sector, and will develop and practice skills to become more proficient negotiators. The course will be a combination of learning about negotiations and participating in exercises and simulated negotiations. The exercises and simulations are chosen to reinforce the theories about successful negotiations and successful negotiators and to all students to develop their own negotiation skills. Course Objectives 1. To understand the dynamics and process of interpersonal and inter-group conflict, and recognize different conflict behaviors. 2. To understand how organizations manage conflict. 3. To learn how to manage conflict more effectively. 4. To explore the major concepts and theories of bargaining and negotiation. 5. To learn how negotiations can lead to better outcomes than other methods of managing or resolving conflicts. 6. To learn the differences between distributive and integrative negotiations. 7. To understand the process of negotiations in varied contexts. 8. To become better principled negotiators. 9. To acquire and practice negotiation skills. The ability to successfully negotiate and to collaboratively solve problems and seize opportunities is increasingly a necessity of effective management, and rests on a combination of analytical and interpersonal skills. In the case of negotiation, analysis is important because collective problem solvers cannot develop promising strategies without a deep understanding of the structure and context of the situation, the interests of other parties, the opportunities and barriers to creating and claiming value (twin forces of cooperation and competition) on a sustainable basis, and the range of possible moves and countermoves both at and away from the bargaining table. Beyond analysis, interpersonal skills are important because negotiation and other forms of collective problem-solving are essentially processes of communication, relationship and trust building (or breaking) and mutual persuasion.
I hope you will learn a great deal about yourself from exposure to situations that involve a shifting mix of cooperation and competition as well as important ethical choices. As a result, your effectiveness as a public manager should increase significantly. Overall, I hope that you will complete the course a more reflective, analytically savvy, effective and, in all senses of the term, good problem-solver and negotiator. Ground rules: 1. All behavior is real. We will be participating in simulated negotiations throughout the semester. Students will make their own choices about the way they behave. All behavior has consequences and students must be willing to live with these consequences. The stakes are very different inside and outside the classroom, but the behavior is no less real. 2. All confidential information provided in most role-playing scenarios will be treated as confidential. Students are expected to excuse themselves from an exercise if they are aware of the other side s confidential information. 3. The behavior of individuals and groups within the boundaries of the course should be held in the strictest confidence. Students are encouraged to respect the rights of others and to refrain from out-of-class discussions unless negotiations are to take part outside of class. 4. Even within a simulated environment people become angry and upset when betrayed, duped or ignored. No violence (threats of or physical confrontations) will be allowed. Student Work Requirements There is a significant amount of reading to do between all class sessions. You will be expected to keep up with the readings and apply what you have learned in the readings to the negotiation simulations that you are taking part in. I have assigned the readings to roughly correspond to the topics that we will be discussing. Getting through the first two assigned texts (LMSB and Lax) quickly will benefit you in the exercises and the negotiation analyses so if you have the ability to do so please read ahead. The Ury et.al. text is assigned for you to apply in your final paper. So you can wait on that text until the end. This course will require that students come to class prepared to discuss and negotiate. The purpose of any lectures by the instructor is NOT to summarize the readings so that you do not have to do them! Lectures are to help you understand difficult information, to set the stage for future readings and simulations and to cover material that is not in the readings. Class attendance and participation is critical; negotiating skills, like swimming, cannot be learned by reading alone. Roughly every class session you will be assigned a role, paired with one or more counterparts, given instructions both general instructions that are common knowledge and confidential instructions for your eyes only. You are expected to prepare conscientiously and carry out the exercise. These exercises are the most important vehicle for learning in class. One major requirement, therefore, is that you 2
carefully prepare for, carry out, and be ready to share insights from the exercises with the class. Many of the exercises include confidential instructions. Do not show these confidential instructions to others! You may choose to discuss or reveal some of their content indeed, communicating your interests clearly is essential to effective negotiation but you must not physically show others your confidential instruction sheets. This rule largely mirrors reality since it is rarely possible, in most negotiation situations, for example, to reveal your real underlying values and information to your negotiating counterparts. The instructions for the exercises are designed to be self-explanatory. Please follow the instructions carefully. If the instructions fix the set of issues to be negotiated, do not invent new ones; this will distract from the intended focus of the exercise as well as make scoring and comparisons hopelessly complicated. The class functions far more effectively when we all cooperate in observing this rule. Though most of the exercises are extreme simplifications of reality, they are intended to isolate and illuminate particular aspects that do arise in real situations. Please take the exercises seriously, prepare carefully and participate energetically. For those exercises that have fixed numerical scoring systems, you should take the scores as representative of your true interests and try to do as well as you can, subject to whatever considerations of responsibility and ethics you expect would shape your behavior in similar real-world situations. For those exercises without numerical scoring systems, you should think hard about what you would care about, and what trade-offs you would be willing to make, in the specified situation. Some students may feel uncomfortable trying to out-guess or outwit other class members, but past students have overwhelmingly found the experience rewarding a low cost chance to try different approaches to negotiation and related skill areas. To the extent that your wits and emotions are engaged in the exercises, they will help you become more aware and effective problem solvers. As with a sports match among friends, it does more for your game and is more fun to play vigorously and intelligently while on the game field. Your Objectives in the Exercises What is it that you should be trying to accomplish in these exercises? In general, your aim is not to try to do better than the player with whom you are playing; better is often meaningless in games that are not strictly competitive and where you and your counterpart start in very asymmetric situations. In some exercises, you may be in a position to help your counterpart achieve what he or she wants to achieve and to improve your own lot as well. This is certainly a good thing to do. But what if you can improve the other person s situation without improving your own? What you do may depend on how you feel about your counterpart. During the play of the exercise the other player(s) might have helped you or behaved reasonably and you may wish to reward him or her. Or, the opposite may be true, and your altruism could change to malevolence. 3
A word of caution: don t expect that your colleagues will think and choose as you do. Be wary. This does not mean you should act in ways that you think are competitively inappropriate just because others seem to be doing it. Your aim is to maximize your interests, and your learning, tempered by your concern to do what you think is right. One way to learn more about negotiations and improve one's negotiations skills is to observe others negotiate. Each of you will be required to observe an undergraduate negotiation, write an analysis of the negotiation and provide written (and oral) feedback to the negotiators. I will give you more information on this assignment later in the semester. Assignments and Grading: Midterm exam 30% Class participation (including scored negotiations) 30% Final Paper 30% Written negotiation analysis 10% The class participation segment of your grade will be based upon your class attendance, preparation for all class activities and the quality of your contributions to class discussions and simulations. Your classmates will contribute to your class participation grade. Therefore, if you come to negotiations without adequate preparation your negotiation counterpart is likely to notice, be frustrated, and grade you accordingly. Some of the negotiations will be scored and included in your class discussion grade. Each student will be required to write a 10 page paper analyzing the ways in which an organization where you currently work, or have worked, manages conflict. Your are asked to identify obstacles to more effective conflict management and to recommend changes that would lead to more effective conflict management. Students are expected to apply the concepts in Getting Disputes Resolved: Designing Systems to Cut the Costs of Conflict by William L. Ury, Jeanne M. Brett, and Stephen B. Goldberg. Textbooks and Simulations: Negotiation: Readings Exercises and Cases, 4th Ed. by Lewicki, Saunders, Minton and Barry (Boston: Irwin McGraw-Hill, 2003); referred to as LSM B. The Manager as Negotiator: Bargaining for Cooperation and Competitive Gain by David A. Lax and James K.Sebenius (New York: The Free Press, 1986). Referred to as Lax. The Mind and Heart of the Negotiator, 3rd Ed., by Leigh L. Thompson, (Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2005). Referred to as Thompson. Getting Disputes Resolved: Designing Systems to Cut the Costs of Conflict by William L. Ury, Jeanne M. Brett, and Stephen B. Goldberg (Cambridge: PON Books, 1993). Referred to as Ury. Simulations as announced in class and posted on the website. 4
Class Schedule SUBJECT TO CHANGE AT ANY TIME! Week 1: Tues. Aug. 23 Introduction to Conflict and Negotiations Topics: Terms, definitions, conflict, distributive bargaining, trust, the negotiator s dilemma, negotiation and management, analytics. Commons Dilemma Week 1 Exercises: Bidding, Personal Bargaining Inventory, Oil Pricing Exercise Assignment: Collect Nos Due Week 2 (From Lewicki, Saunders, and Minton and Barry, Negotiation 4th Edition, pp 595-596.) Week 2: Tues. Aug 30 Topic: Principled Negotiations, Integrative Bargaining, Readings: LSMB Sections One, Two. Lax, Chapters 1-2; Thompson, Ury Chapter 1, pp. 3-19. Video: Chaldini, Influence (I will show this video when we move to the permanent classroom) Exercises: Alpha Project; Clarkson Airport Authority -- Write 1 page letter. Collecting Nos Assignment Due Commons Dilemma Week 2 Week 3: Tues. Sept. 6 Collect Nos assignment due. Topic: Pre-negotiation Planning Readings: LSMB Sections Three and Four; Lax, Chapters 3-4. Exercise: Town of Tamarack Commons Dilemma Week 3 Week 4: Tues. Sept. 13 Topic: Complex Negotiations, Multiple Parties, Issues and Coalitions Readings: LSMB, Section Five; Lax Chapters 5-7. Exercise: Operation Wilderness Commons Dilemma Week 4 Week 5: Tues. Sept 20 Topic: Power in Negotiation Readings: LSMB Six; Lax Chapter 9-10 Exercise: Power Game Commons Dilemma Week 5 Week 6: Tues. Sept 27 Topic: Ethics in Negotiation Readings: LSMB Seven; Lax Chapter 9 Exercise: Newtown School Dispute week 1 Commons Dilemma Week 6 5
Week 7: Tues. Oct 4 Commons Dilemma Week 7 Topic: Complex Negotiations, Coalitions, Teams Readings: LSMB Sections Eight and Nine; Lax Chapter 16 Exercise: Newtown School Dispute Week 2 Week 8: Tues. Oct. 11 Topic: Midterm Commons Dilemma Week 8 Week 9: Tues. Oct. 18 Topic: Management through Negotiations Readings: Lax Chapters 11-14 Exercise: Week 10: Tues. Oct 25 Topic: Managing Difficult Negotiations Readings: LSMB Section 12 Exercise: Mexico City Water Week 11: Tues. Nov 1 Topic: Mediation, Third Party Approaches Readings: LSMB Section 13; Lax Chapter 16. Exercise: Pacific City Utilities Service Department Week 12: Tues. Nov 8 Topic: Conflict Management Systems Readings: Lax Chapter 17; Ury all. Exercise: Week 13: Tues. Nov 15 Exercise: Week 14: Tues. Nov 22 Last day of class Concise Negotiations Bibliography Howard Raiffa, The Art and Science of Negotiation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982) G Richard Schell, Bargaining for Advantage : Negotiation Strategies for Reasonable People (New York: Penguin Books, 2000). 6
Roger Fisher and William Ury Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In, 2 nd Ed. (New York: Penguin Books, 1999). William Ury, Getting Past No: Negotiating Your Way From Confrontation to Cooperation Rev. Ed. (New York: Bantam Books, 1991). Roy J. Lewicki, David M. Saunders, and John W. Minton, Essentials of Negotiation (Boston: Irwin McGraw Hill, 2000). Roger Fisher, et. al. Beyond Machiavelli: Tools for Coping with Conflict (New York: Penguin Books, 1996). Deborah M. Kolb and Associates, When Talk Works: Profiles of Mediators (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1994). Deborah M. Kolb and Judith Williams, The Shadow Negotiation: How Women Can Master the Hidden Agendas that Determine Bargaining Success, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000). I. William Zartman & Jeffrey Z. Rubin, Eds. Power and Negotiation (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2000). Michael Watkins, Breakthrough Business Negotiation: A Toolbox for Managers, (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2002). Howard Raiffa, Negotiation Analysis: The Science and Art of Collaborative Decision Making (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2002). Dean G. Pruitt and Peter J. Carnevale, Negotiation in Social, (Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole, 1993). Allan H. Goodman, Basic Skills for the New Mediator (Rockville, MD: Solomon Publications, 1994). Roderick M. Kramer, David M. Messick, Eds. Negotiation as a Social Process (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1995). J. William Breslin and Jeffrey Z. Rubin Negotiation Theory and Practice (Cambridge, MA: Program on Negotiations Books, 1995) 7