Negotiation Fall 2007 Professor Michael Moffitt Office
308 346-0506 mmoffitt@law.uoregon.edu
Course Memo Introduction
During the ten weeks of this
course, we will engage in an introductory exploration of the practice(s) of
negotiation. My goal is to help you to
improve your skills in understanding and conducting negotiations in a variety
of contexts. I do not believe that there
is a single “best” or “correct” way to negotiate. At the same time, it is my experience that
there are better and worse sets of practices.
I have every confidence that over the term, you will develop an improved
sense of the approach(es) to negotiation that you believe will serve you best
in various contexts. With some hard work
and careful reflection, I believe that you will become more observant,
purposeful, analytically skilled, behaviorally agile, and persuasive
negotiators. I have designed the course
toward those aims. This course is structured
somewhat differently than many courses you may have taken previously. This course requires significant attention
and effort during the term. You will be
asked to prepare a number of materials for each class session. In many ways, the ideas we will cover in
Negotiation are not terribly complex – until you try to put them into
practice. I suspect that you will find
the course exhausting at times, and I hope that you will find it rewarding as
well. Before describing the course
in more detail, I would like to share a few thoughts about negotiation and
about the class with you. 1. Negotiation is everywhere. For purposes of learning, I think the most
helpful definition of negotiation is broad.
I would suggest that a useful definition of negotiation is any effort to
influence or persuade someone else to a particular course of action, though I
am open to many other competing definitions.
The important thing is to note that by “negotiation” I do not refer
simply to the highly formalized or stylized negotiations that make for blurbs
in the news. You negotiate with your
roommates, your friends, your colleagues, your professors, and any number of
other people all the time. (Indeed, you
negotiate with yourselves perhaps most of all.
Some of that, though, goes far beyond what we will study in this
course.) I strongly suspect – and hope –
that as you go through this course, you will begin to observe some of your
interactions with others with a new perspective. 2. Like any skill, negotiation aptitude can improve
with careful work. There is a
popular perception that some people are “born negotiators,” while others among
us somehow “don’t have it.” In fact, all
of us are born negotiators. Anyone who
has ever dealt with infants and children for very long knows that negotiating
begins very early in life. Since the
time when we were very young, most of us have broadened our negotiation
repertoires through a process of observation, experimentation, and reflection. The course aims to provide you with intensive
opportunities to do all three of those things.
Unlike a course in Civil Procedure or Medieval Poetry or Antitrust or
Differential Equations, to which you come with very little personal experience,
you come to this course with many years of experience negotiating. While you may not have yet negotiated in a
particular professional setting, there are some important lessons to be drawn
from the experience you already have. 3. There is no single, universal “best” way to
negotiate. We will consider many
different approaches to negotiation over the semester. Your goal should not be to hunt for the one
that is the “right” answer. Negotiation
is a dynamic, context-sensitive enterprise.
I am deeply suspicious about efforts to create universal negotiation
rules (“always/never give the first offer,” “always/never negotiate in
private,” “always/never walk out,” and so on) because they ignore important
differences in context, in personal comfort, in goals, and in
counterparts. At the same time, I will
encourage you strongly to develop a rich set of guidelines for yourselves –
practices that form something of a personal default, from which you can vary if
you perceive a strategic reason to do so.
We will practice some scenarios that will permit practice of baseline
approaches and some scenarios that will likely demand that you expand your
repertoire in order to be successful. 4. Learning to negotiate need not be a competition. Many people see negotiation as a competition
to be “won,” and we will talk at great length about whether and when this view
of negotiation is accurate or helpful.
Regardless of whether you view negotiation as a competition,
however, my experience teaching negotiation has convinced me that learning
negotiation need not and should not be a competitive endeavor. This is a course aimed at improving
skills. By definition, it will require
everyone in the class to experiment with different approaches, searching for
the things that seem to work best. That
kind of genuine experimentation can take place only in a learning environment
that is open, supportive, honest and creative.
I will ask your help in making sure that we structure our time together
in ways that help us best to create that atmosphere. I will, on occasion provide
handouts or electronic versions of some of the readings for this course. Required Texts •
Roger
Fisher, Bill Ury, and Bruce Patton, Getting
to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In (2d ed
Penguin 1991). •
Douglas
Stone, Bruce Patton and Sheila Heen, Difficult
Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most (1999). •
Michael
Moffitt & Robert Bordone, eds., The
Handbook of Dispute Resolution (Jossey-Bass 2005). A number of the reading
assignments for this course will be drawn from this collection, and at least
one other course in the master’s program also will be drawing materials from
this book. I can say – even accounting
for the modesty-driven discomfort it causes me to do so – that The
Handbook of Dispute Resolution is a high quality collection of
materials authored by many of the leading figures in our field. And, to assuage my own concern about the
potential appearance of self-interest, I use any royalties I receive from this
assignment to supplement my donations to the Public Interest fund here at the
school. If you have questions or
concerns about this last text, please feel free to come talk with me. Recommended Texts There are many other
outstanding texts on negotiation. I have
listed two others below, and I am happy to provide more guidance, if you are
interested. I have absolutely no expectation
that you will read these texts. I just
thought I would give you a sense of some of the other outstanding materials out
there. •
Howard
Raiffa, The
Art and Science of Negotiation (Belknap 1982). •
Written
Products, Grades, Participation and Attendance
Your grade in this course
will be based on your participation and on the written materials you produce
during the term, with each counting for roughly half of your grade. Your
class participation grade will be made up of a number of factors, including
attendance, the quality of your contributions to class, and your preparation
for and participation in class exercises. ATTENDANCE IS REQUIRED
FOR EVERY CLASS. As
with all classes, if you miss a class, your own education will suffer. In this course, however, absences affect
others as well. In essentially every
class, we will be doing simulated negotiations or exercises that will have you
paired with one or more of your classmates.
If you are not present, your classmates will not have the experience
they deserve and it will cause considerable logistical
difficulties. I understand, of course,
that things sometimes happen that require absence. I would ask, or even plead, that if you have
to miss a class that you contact me with as much advance notice as
possible. Where appropriate, absences
will be reflected in a student’s participation grade. If you have any questions or concerns about
this policy, please see me as soon as possible. A Note on Negotiation Performance. In some
schools, a student’s grade in a negotiation course depends on her or his
performance in the simulated negotiations.
For a variety of reasons I’ll describe in class, I do not believe that
this creates an appropriate learning environment. I will not, therefore, factor your results
into your final grade, with the following exception: On occasion, a student’s performance in a
simulated negotiation reflects a lack of adequate preparation. To the extent that you are clearly unprepared
for a simulation, I will factor that into your overall Participation
score. My expectation, however, is that
all of you will be well prepared, and that you will have varying degrees of
“success” in your outcomes in simulations because you will be experimenting
with different approaches. Not
everything you try will work out – that’s the nature of good
experimentation. Please experiment with
various approaches – other than approaches that eschew preparation – without
concern that it will affect your grade. Contacting
Me
I welcome the opportunity to
get to know each of you better over the semester. I am happy to meet with you during my office
hours, and I also encourage you to email me to set up other times to meet. My general contact information is included on
the first page of this working syllabus.
My home phone number is _______.
Please understand that I have two daughters under the age of seven. I recognize that sometimes in life, things
will come up that require immediate attention.
I would ask that you exercise careful judgment in deciding whether to
call me at home. Daily Schedule Following is the working
syllabus for the course this semester. I
may decide to alter the contents of the class plans based on experiences during
the semester. I will give you as much
notice as I can regarding any changes to our plans. For each day, I have noted any reading
assignments and cases to prepare. Working Syllabus Assignments for the first day: •
Prepare
to negotiate The Oil
Pricing Case and the Inside
Out Case. Do not discuss either
case with anyone else. DAY ONE – September 24, 2007 Class plans for today: Introduction
to the Course The
Oil
Pricing case The
Inside Out case Assignments for the week: •
Writing
assignment #1 •
Prepare
the Sally
Soprano case • Read Getting
to Yes DAY TWO – October 1, 2007 Class plans for today: The
Sally
Soprano case A Framework
for Understanding Negotiation Assignments for the week: • Writing assignment #2 • Prepare the PowerScreen
case •
Read
Bruce Patton, Negotiation, in The
Handbook of Dispute Resolution DAY THREE – October 8, 2007 Class plans for today: The
PowerScreen
Case Application
Session Assignments for the week: •
Do
not forget to schedule time to conduct your Chuck’s
Wagon negotiations •
Writing
assignment #3 – prepare packet to be turned in before start of the next class •
Prepare
the Ruffles About Rifles case • Read Jeffrey Senger, Decision Analysis in Negotiation, 87 Marq. L. Rev. 723 (2004). (handout) • Read Marjorie
Aaron, Finding Settlement with Numbers,
Maps, and Trees in The
Handbook of Dispute Resolution •
Read
Michael Moffitt, Disputes As
Opportunities to Create Value in The
Handbook of Dispute Resolution DAY FOUR – October 15, 2007 Class plans for today: Value
Creation The
Ruffles About Rifles Case Methods
of Distribution Decision
Analysis Assignments for the week: •
Writing
assignment # 4 (exercise) •
Prepare
The Conference case • Read Difficult
Conversations, Chapters 1-6 DAY FIVE – October 22, 2007 Class plans for today: Difficult
Behaviors The Conference
case Application
Session Assignments for the week: •
No
later than Thursday, October 25, 2007, complete the Chuck’s Wagon negotiations •
Writing
assignment #5 (client memo). Submit no
later than 10am, Monday, October 29, 2007 •
Read
Difficult
Conversations, Chapters 7-12 • Read emotions readings (handout) DAY SIX – October 29, 2007 Class plans for today: Communication Listening
and Framing Exercises Feelings
and Identity The
Casino
Case Assignments for the week: •
Writing
assignment #6 •
Prepare
the Role
Reversal Exercise •
Prepare
the Author! Author! case DAY SEVEN – November 5, 2007 Class plans for today: The
Role
Reversal Exercise The
Author! Author! case Assignments for the week: •
No
later than the beginning of class on November 12, complete your client
interview from the DONS
case. You should budget at least 90 minutes for this interview. •
Prepare
the Author! Author! review •
Prepare
the DONS
case •
Read
ethics materials (handout) DAY EIGHT – November 12, 2007 Class plans for today: The
Author! Author! case review The
DONS
case Assignments for the week: •
Writing
assignment #7 •
Read
One-Text materials (handout) • Prepare the Harborco
case DAY NINE – November 19, 2007 Class plans for today: The
One-Text Process The
Harborco
case Going
Forward Assignments for the week: •
Submit
your FINAL NEGOTIATION preparation materials no later than the beginning of
your scheduled final negotiation •
Prepare
(in your FINAL team) to negotiate the FINAL NEGOTIATION case DAY TEN – November 26, 2007 Class plans for today: Reserved
for the FINAL NEGOTIATION THREE GROUPS 2p-3:30p THREE GROUPS 330p-5p (I’ll tell them to keep going
after that to completion) DUE DATE for final materials:
Noon, Monday, December 10, 2007 |