Business Negotiations. BATNA.

Instructions 

Answer ONE question. Work limit: 2000 words excluding bibliography. Your essay should include
illustrations from at least five of the negotiation exercises during the term. Please pay close
attention to the ‘Important Advice to Students’ below before starting your essay.
1. Towards the end of an important but protracted negotiation, your opposite number has just
announced their ‘final offer’. You are uncertain whether or not they are bluffing. What signs would
you look for in their interests, behaviour and emotions as a guide to whether you should accept
or hold out for more? What steps might you take at this stage in the negotiation to probe their
sincerity and why do you think this will be effective?
2. You have been called in to advise a buyer company seeking to establish a long term
relationship with some of its key suppliers. As part of this, it is considering whether or not to
agree a procedure for dealing with disputes that might arise once it is up and running. Explain
the main issues you would advise the buyer company to consider in designing such a procedure with its suppliers, such as mediation, conciliation and arbitration, including whether it should just
deal with problems as they arise on an ad hoc basis? Use theory and sources from the literature
to support your argument.
3. It is often argued that forming coalitions in a negotiation can bring great advantages in terms
of increased bargaining power, but their biggest weakness lies in determining a common set of
goals among the coalition members, and getting members to maintain their commitment to
agreed goals because they each have differing priorities. You fear that the opposing party in your
upcoming negotiation will target such weaknesses. Explain how you would go about ensuring
your coalition remains intact, and why you think this would be effective.
4. Very many writers on negotiation advise that you should never lie in a negotiation. Yet, bluffing
is a standard negotiation tactic, and according to the ‘Ted Talk’ (presented in Lecture 5), we are
all liars because it “oils the wheels” of normal social interaction. Explain whether you consider
these two sets of advice contradictory. How should a good negotiator distinguish between the
two differing pieces of advice?
Important advice:
Your answers should consider different types of negotiation, especially distributive and
integrative, refer to the course materials and use illustrations from at least five of the negotiation
exercises during the term.
Advice on answering the question: we have designed these questions to encourage you to think
hard about the theories we have been using during the term, as well as to apply that theory to the exercises in class. We therefore attach equal importance to theory and analysis of practice.
Advice on reading: although we have done our best to assign a textbook reading to each week’s
exercise, the reading list contains numerous other items on which you should reflect. Ideally,
your answer should take account of 6-12 of the readings. You may also deepen your
understanding by reading more widely. But, please remember that one extra hour spent thinking
hard about the question is worth two extra hours of reading.
Word limit: 2000 words excluding bibliography.