N09: Relationships in Negotiation

 

 

            This chapter identifies several issues that make negotiating in relationship different from and more challenging than conducting either distributive or integrative negotiations between parties who have no past or intended future relationship. “Relationship” is the meaning assigned by two or more individuals to their connectedness or coexistence.

 

            Key Elements in Managing Negotiations within Relationships: Reputation, Trust, and Justice are three elements that become more critical and pronounced when they occur within a negotiation.
            1. Reputation is a perceptual identity, reflective of the combination of salient personal characteristics and accomplishments, demonstrated behavior and intended images preserved over time, as observed directly and/or as reported from secondary sources.

            2. Trust Daniel McAllister defined the word trust as an individual’s belief in and willingness to act on the words, actions and decisions of another.

            3. Justice Individuals in organizations often debate whether their pay is fair, whether they are being fairly treated, or whether the organization might be treating some group of people in an unfair manner.

 

            This chapter we evaluated the status of previous negotiation research which has focused almost exclusively on market-exchange relationships and evaluated its status for different types of relationship, particularly communal-sharing and authority-ranking relationships.

 

Question

1. Why Is Relationship Important In Negotiation?

            When you have been doing business for a long time with someone, the relationship can be very important: it can have an impact on the price, how quickly you get delivery, what sort of quality of goods you receive. Relationship is also important in negotiating within your family. You will be related to your parents/siblings/cousins for a long time. When you want them to do something or to stop doing something you need to figure out whether that issue is more important than the long-term relationship.

 

 

2. What the Three things that contributes to trust?

            1. Individual’s chronic disposition toward trust

            2. Situation factors

            3. History of the relationship between the parties

 

3. Defined Elements of Negotiation – Relationships?

            Too often, people believe that negotiation is all about doing the deal and nothing else that a negotiation is successfully completed once we have made an agreement, and/or signed a contract to formalize that agreement. However, the deal is never done unless we establish and preserve the working relationships needed to perform the agreement.

 

            Unfortunately, too many negotiators consider that a signed contract or formal agreement represents the consummation of the deal which cannot be further from the truth the deal is not just the contract, it also extends to the working relationship that embodies and is committed to carrying out the agreed contractual terms. Many people are often tempted to use all means at their disposal (including power, force, deceit etc) to obtain easy, short term gains at a cost to the other party (and long term relationships) this follows the win/lose mindset of positional or distributional bargaining with its focus upon claiming value.