Negotiations Strategy Article Analysis

Essay by JMachotaUniversity, Bachelor'sA, April 2009

download word file, 4 pages 3.0

Negotiation is a part of everyone’s lives, personal or professional. This is important, especially in today’s competitive marketplace. Negotiations may be a part of dealing with people, the purchase of a product or service, business contracts, personal relationships and or official matters. Everyone has a different strategy for negotiations. This paper will attempt to analyze two articles that describe different ways of negotiating. It will compare and contrast the two strategies and also briefly describe how each might apply at my workplace.

The first article is titled Negotiation Strategy: Planning is Critical, written by Cathy Cronin-Harris. The article emphasizes the importance of planning for a negotiation. The author of the article calls attention to five points of interest which, “can provide a negotiator with the direction needed to do effective problem solving at the negotiation table” (Cronin-Harris , 2004). The first part of the planning process is deciding on priority interests and ranking them.

Each party involved in the negotiation session should identify its goals. Another important factor is to assess the opposing side’s priorities. Visualizing what the other side may do helps in a distributive bargaining situation.

Remembering that money may be a symbol or substitution for an individual’s needs is also important in negotiation situations. According to the author of Negotiation Strategy: Planning is Critical:Thinking outside the box about why a person is claiming specific monetary recovery can offer options that meet both sides’ needs more productively. If that option doesn’t work, an invitation to the other side for suggestions might reveal what they really want and establish a problem-solving focus (Cronin-Harris, 2004).

This article also stresses that negotiators should plan factual inquiries carefully. Cathy Cronin-Harris states:The best deals can arise from solid information sharing. It paves the way for creating viable solution options. It also creates a...