B712 - Fall 2011-1 of 10 COURSE OBJECTIVE Business 712 Managerial Negotiations Fall 2011 Course Outline Human Resources and Management Area DeGroote School of Business McMaster University The purpose of this course is to help you understand the theory and process of effective negotiations. The course will complement the technical and diagnostic skills learned in other courses at DeGroote. While a manager needs strong analytical skills to develop optimal solutions to problems, good negotiation skills are needed in order for these solutions to be accepted and implemented. Great analysis is of little value if you are unable to win support for the actions it recommends. To provide you with the opportunity to develop both analytical frameworks and practical skills in negotiation, the course will rely primarily on hands-on learning. INSTRUCTOR AND CONTACT INFORMATION COURSE ELEMENTS Dr. Haniyeh Yousofpour, Instructor yousofh@mcmaster.ca Office: RJC 254 Office Hours: By Appointment Office: (905)525-9140 x27430 Web Page: http://avenue.mcmaster.ca Credit Value: 3 Team skills: Yes IT skills: No Global: No Avenue: No Verbal skills: Yes Numeracy: Yes Political: No Participation: Yes Written skills: Yes Innovation: Yes Social: Yes Evidence-based: Yes Experiential: Yes Final exam: No Guest speakers: Yes COURSE DESCRIPTION Why study negotiations? We negotiate every day. We negotiate with potential employers, coworkers, roommates, landlords, parents, bosses, merchants, service providers, spouses, and even our children. What price we want to pay, how much we want to be paid, who will do the dishes... all of these are negotiations. Yet, although people negotiate all the time, most know very little about the strategy and psychology of effective negotiations. Why do we sometimes get our way while other times we walk away feeling frustrated by our inability to achieve the agreement we desire?
B712 - Fall 2011-2 of 10 Negotiation is the art and science of securing agreements between two or more interdependent parties. It is a craft that must hold cooperation and competition in creative tension. It can be very difficult to do well. Even the most experienced negotiators often fall prey to common biases and errors in judgment. Fortunately, there is a massive and still-growing collection of good research in the field of negotiations. The purpose of this course is to help you understand the theory and process of effective negotiations that has emerged (and is emerging) from all that careful study. How we study negotiations Practice. Reflection. Analysis. Practice again This course is unapologetically experiential (and therefore fun!) The best way to learn negotiation skills and actually internalize them is to negotiate in a setting where insight is offered, feedback is plentiful, personal reflection is encouraged, and careful analysis is required. The course is built around a series of negotiation exercises and debriefings. Almost all exercises require preparation in advance. Some exercises require students to prepare outside of class as a team, either by phone or in person. Students are expected to be fully prepared for exercises prior to class and to participate in the debriefings. LEARNING OUTCOMES As a result of this course, I hope you will: Understand more about the nature of negotiation. Gain a broad intellectual understanding of the central concepts in negotiation. Develop a toolkit of useful negotiation skills, strategies, and approaches. Develop confidence in the negotiation process as an effective means for resolving conflict in organizations. Improve your analytical abilities and your capacity to understand and predict the behavior of individuals, groups, and organizations in competitive situations. A central objective of the course will be to explore the major concepts and theories of the psychology of bargaining and negotiation, and the dynamics of interpersonal and intergroup conflict and its resolution. A second objective will be to help you develop the sophistication to analyze bargaining and conflict relationships, and to learn (through class discussion and selfassessment) about your own individual bargaining style. REQUIRED COURSE MATERIALS AND READINGS 1. Lewicki, Barry, Saunders and Tasa (2010). Essentials of Negotiation (1 st Canadian edition). 2. Courseware Package: purchase a copy at the bookstore (approx $50) Note: Most of the exercises we will be using in the course are protected by copyright and require fees for their use. The price of the textbook and courseware reflect these costs. As such, each student must purchase a copy of the courseware.
B712 - Fall 2011-3 of 10 EVALUATION Components and Weights Course Contribution 15% Midterm 25% Learning Journal & Scoring System 30% Self-Appraisal Paper 30% Conversion If you are an MBA student, at the end of the course your overall percentage grade will be converted to your letter grade in accordance with the following conversion scheme. LETTER GRADE PERCENT LETTER GRADE PERCENT A+ 90-100 C+ 60-64 A 85-89 C 55-59 A- 80-84 C- 50-54 B+ 75-79 F 00-49 B 70-74 B- 65-69 If you are a PhD student or a non-mba graduate student, you will receive a final grade based on the McMaster University School of Graduate Studies 6-point grading scale (i.e., anything lower than a B- is a failure). Communication and Feedback Students that are uncomfortable in directly approaching an instructor regarding a course concern may choose to send a confidential and anonymous email to the respective Area Chair at: http:///curr/emailchairs.aspx Students who wish to correspond with instructors directly via email must send messages that originate from their official McMaster University email account. This protects the confidentiality and sensitivity of information as well as confirms the identity of the student. Course Contribution (15%) Class Discussion (5%): Students are expected to participate in all class discussions and approach each negotiation exercise seriously and professionally. You are also expected to be prepared for class and to contribute to class discussions. You will be evaluated (at the end of term) on the quality of your contribution to class discussions. Quality comments possess one or more of the following properties: Offer a unique and relevant perspective Contribute to moving the analysis forward Include evidence, demonstrate recognition of basic concepts, and integrate these with reflective thinking
B712 - Fall 2011-4 of 10 Link relevant concepts to current events Planning and Role Preparation (10%): When a negotiation role is assigned in advance, you are expected to come to class fully prepared to negotiate. This involves having carefully read your role information and having prepared a planning document for the negotiation. (See appendix to this syllabus for a sample planning document format.) The required planning documents are listed in the week by week outline below. You should bring two copies of your planning document to class so that you can turn one copy in at the beginning of the class. Planning documents are graded on a Pass/Fail basis I will let you know when a planning document receives a failing grade and give you the option of revising it in hindsight. Midterm (25%) You will write a midterm on November 8 th. The midterm will test your knowledge of key concepts and strategies, and place a premium on practical knowledge. Questions will be drawn directly from the readings and lecture debriefings. The time allocated for the midterm is 90 minutes. Learning Journal & Scoring System Scoring System (10%): Prior to the union-management negotiation, your group must submit a scoring system. The objectives of a scoring system are to quantify the quality of different alternative outcomes and to help negotiators assess the tradeoffs among issues. The readings in the courseware will assist you in doing this. Specifically, Chapters 10 & 11 of the Raiffa book (see the courseware) provide details on how to create an additive scoring system. Each group should hand in one copy of their scoring system. Requirements: It should be no more than 2 pages. A good scoring system includes your reservation points, targets, and an explanation of the group s planned strategy. Your entire group shares the grade for the scoring system and the learning journal. Team-Based Learning Journal (20%): The purpose of the learning journal assignment is to encourage the entire group to reflect on their individual and collective behavior in a complex team environment. A second purpose is to analyze what you all will have learned from these experiences. The task in this assignment is to describe reactions, perceptions, and significant insights gained from participation in the MAPO Union/Management Exercise. The most important thing to remember for this assignment is that the focus should be on analyzing how each individual in the team contributed to the dynamics that occurred. Therefore, the paper should address the various roles and strategies adopted by each member, and how these dynamics shaped the negotiations. Finally, remember to look forward. How does this experience help prepare you (as a whole) for future negotiations that might occur in teams? A related question might be: What would the group do the same or differently in the future, or how would the group like to behave in order to perform more effectively? A good paper is one that tries to step back from a bargaining situation, identifies key events and processes, uses readings to help support the analysis, and is written well. A major criterion is the extent to which the paper reveals insightful reflection. Good papers also convince me that everyone in the team has learned from the experience.
B712 - Fall 2011-5 of 10 Requirements: The learning journal should be no longer than 6 pages (double-spaced, Times 12 point font, 1 inch margins). Additional appendices can be included. The journal is due on October 18 th, which is the class in which we debrief the exercise. Self-Appraisal Paper (30%) The midterm will test your mastery of the key objective content of this course. However, negotiation is also partly an art that can be practiced, studied, and improved. During the course, each student is expected to maintain a journal of diary entries describing his/her role experiences and reflecting on learning experiences as a negotiator. Diary entries should be made very soon after each negotiation simulation. Your diary entries will form an appendix for the self-appraisal paper, and the entries will form the raw data for the paper. The self-appraisal paper has three main components that should be fully integrated: exercises and negotiations; your personal observations; and theory. In reflecting upon and analyzing your experiences and learning, take stock of your personal strengths and weaknesses, record key lessons from the class material and exercises, and target avenues for improvement. Be as succinct as possible. I regard the paper with diaries as a confidential communication between each student and the instructor. As a result, I expect you to be specific in identifying other people and their behaviour in describing your reactions to the negotiation simulations this information will not be shared with other students. Your task is to describe your reactions, perceptions, impressions, or significant insights gained from participation in or reflection on the simulations. The points below are for consideration only and do not constitute an outline. The paper should not be a copy of the list below with responses, but rather you should integrate some of these concerns into your overall analyses. You may want to address some of the following points: a. what you expected in the situation b. how you prepared for the negotiation c. how you and others in the group behaved d. what you learned about your skills e. what you would do differently the next time around Among the questions you might address in your reflection are the following suggested starting points or issues: (1) What are your strengths as a negotiator? (2) What are your weaknesses as a negotiator? How can manage your weaknesses? (3) What qualities/techniques did you admire in the negotiation of others? (4) What experiences from the simulations and exercises were especially memorable to you? What lessons did you learn? (Here you may want to discuss some details of how you and your counterparts negotiated particular exercises.) (5) What lessons from lectures, readings, and/or class discussion did you especially resonate with? Why?
B712 - Fall 2011-6 of 10 (6) What did you find particularly surprising? In what ways (if any) has this course changed the way that you think about negotiation? (7) Have you seen any lessons of the course play themselves out especially poignantly in your personal or professional life? Requirements: Each paper should be no more than 15 and no less than 10 pages, not including the diaries in the appendix. The paper must be double-spaced, using a 12-point font (preferably Times New Roman), and with 1 inch margins. Papers will be evaluated on the following criteria: Analysis: (40%) How thoughtful and insightful was your analysis? Relevance: (40%) How effectively do you relate your discussion to the course readings and concepts discussed in class? Exposition: (20%) How clearly written and professionally presented is the paper? The final paper is due by noon, December 9th th, either in my office or with Jeanette in room RJC 230. A hard copy of the paper is required; however, please include an email address on the title page so I can send feedback via email. ATTENDANCE POLICY Like most negotiation instructors, I have an attendance policy that is strictly enforced. If you must miss an exercise, it is your responsibility to contact me by email at least 24 hours before the class session. You may miss one negotiation exercise without penalty if you provide me with 24 hours notice. Failure to contact me will result in a drop of one letter grade for the course. Further, failure to participate in more than one exercise (regardless of notice) will result in a drop of one letter grade for the course. If you miss a class in which a role assignment is distributed, you must make your own arrangements to get the materials. This strict policy is necessary because your classmates rely on your attendance for their educational experience, and because I must arrange logistics and pairings in advance. CLASS HONOUR CODE Adherence to the following points will help maintain the integrity of the learning experience: You may use any strategy, short of physical violence, to reach agreement, including misrepresentation. However, in selecting a negotiation strategy it is important to remember that a strategy may have ramifications that go beyond the particular negotiation in which it was used. You may not make up facts that materially change the power distribution of the exercise (e.g., your family just bought the company with which you are currently negotiating). If you are asked a question that calls for information that is not in your confidential instructions, you may say, I don t know. You may tell the other side what you wish, but you may not, under any circumstances, show them your confidential role instructions. It is not appropriate to borrow notes, discuss cases, or share papers with people outside of class. Class discussion stays in class.
B712 - Fall 2011-7 of 10 Material used in this class, including but not limited to handouts, exercises, cases, discussion questions, charts, and graphs, are copyrighted and may not be used for purposes other than the education experience of this class without the written consent of the instructor. Do not read ahead in the textbook or courseware! ACADEMIC DISHONESTY It is the student s responsibility to understand what constitutes academic dishonesty. Please refer to the University Senate Academic Integrity Policy at the following URL: http://www.mcmaster.ca/univsec/policy/academicintegrity.pdf This policy describes the responsibilities, procedures, and guidelines for students and faculty should a case of academic dishonesty arise. Academic dishonesty is defined as to knowingly act or fail to act in a way that results or could result in unearned academic credit or advantage. Please refer to the policy for a list of examples. The policy also provides faculty with procedures to follow in cases of academic dishonesty as well as general guidelines for penalties. For further information related to the policy, please refer to the Office of Academic Integrity at: http://www.mcmaster.ca/academicintegrity MISSED EXAMINATIONS / TESTS / CLASS PARTICIPATION When students miss a regularly scheduled midterm, test or class participation for legitimate reasons as adjudicated by the MBA Academic Services Office, the weight for that midterm/test/participation will be distributed across other evaluative components of the course at the discretion of the instructor. Documentation explaining such an absence must be provided to the MBA Academic Services Office within five (5) working days upon returning to school. To document absences for health related reasons, please provide the Petition for Relief for MBA Missed Term Work and the McMaster University Student Health Certificate, which can be found on the DeGroote website at: http:///mba/registration.html University policy states that a student may submit a maximum of three (3) medical certificates per year after which the student must meet with the Director of the program. To document absences for reasons other than health related, please provide documentation supporting the reason for the absence and the Petition for Relief for MBA Missed Term Work: http:///mba/documents/relief.pdf Students unable to write a midterm at the posted exam time due to the following reasons: religious; work-related (for part-time students only); representing university at an academic or varsity athletic event; conflicts between two overlapping scheduled midterm exams; or other extenuating circumstances, have the option of applying for special exam arrangements. Such
B712 - Fall 2011-8 of 10 requests must be made to the MBA Academic Services Office at least ten (10) working days before the scheduled exam along with acceptable documentation. Instructors cannot themselves allow students to unofficially write make-up exams/tests. Adjudication of the request must be handled by the MBA Academic Services Office. All applications for deferred and special final examination arrangements must be made to the MBA Academic Services Office. Failure to meet the stated deadlines may result in the denial of these arrangements. Deferred examination privileges, if granted, must be satisfied during the examination period at the end of the term immediately following. There will be one common sitting for all deferred exams. Please refer to the MBA Calendar for further details. If any exam is missed without a valid reason, students will receive a grade of Zero (0) for that component. STUDENT ACCESSIBILITY SERVICES Student Accessibility Services (SAS) offers various support services for students with disabilities. Students are required to inform SAS of accommodation needs for examinations on or before the last date for withdrawal from a course without failure (please refer to official university sessional dates). Students must forward a copy of such SAS accommodation to the instructor immediately upon receipt. If a student with a disability chooses NOT to take advantage of an SAS accommodation and chooses to sit for a regular exam, a petition for relief may not be filed after the examination is complete. The SAS website is: http://sas.mcmaster.ca POTENTIAL MODIFICATIONS TO THE COURSE The instructor and university reserve the right to modify elements of the course during the term. The university may change the dates and deadlines for any or all courses in extreme circumstances. If either type of modification becomes necessary, reasonable notice and communication with the students will be given with explanation and the opportunity to comment on changes. It is the responsibility of the student to check their McMaster email and course websites weekly during the term and to note any changes.
B712 - Fall 2011-9 of 10 COURSE SCHEDULE Date/Topic In Class After Class To Do After Class To Read Due Today Week 1 Introduction to Negotiations Overview and introduction Prepare role for non profit Essentials Ch. 1 Week 2 Simple, Two-Party Negotiations Negotiate non profit Prepare role for Vacation Plan Essentials Ch. 2 & The Negotiator s Dilemma non profit Week 3 Multi-Issue Negotiations Negotiate Vacation Plan Prepare role for Moms.com Essentials Ch. 3 & 4 Vacation Plan Week 4 Communication Negotiate: Moms.com Prepare role for MAPO and complete the group scoring sheet Essentials Ch. 6 & Ch. 10 & 11 from Raiffa ) Moms.com Week 5 Union-Mgt. (1) Negotiate MAPO Essentials Ch. 10 Group scoring sheet for MAPO due at the beginning of the class Week 6 Union-Mgt. (2) Debrief MAPO Prepare for Bullard Houses Excerpts from Getting Past No Learning Journal for MAPO Due Week 7 Agents Negotiate Bullard Houses Essentials Ch. 5 & 9 Bullard Houses Week 8 Guests Speaker and Prepare for Midterm review for Midterm Week 9 Midterm Prepare for Viking Week 10 Handling Disputes Week 11 Multiparty Negotiations Week 12 Negotiate Viking Negotiate Harborco Prepare role for Harborco Essential Ch. 8 & Goldberg Successful Mediators Group Exercise Essentials Ch. 7 & 12 Viking Harborco Persuasion Week 13 No class Final Paper Due On December 9 th
B712 - Fall 2011-10 of 10 Appendix: Sample Planning Document Negotiation: Role: What issues are most important to you? (list in order of importance) 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. What is your BATNA? Reservation Price? Target? What are your sources of power? What issues are most important to your counterpart? (list in order of importance) 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. What is your counterpart s BATNA? Reservation Price? Target? What are your counterpart s sources of power? What is your opening move / first strategy? Other important information / considerations