Mutual Gains Approach

Last updated

The Mutual Gains Approach (MGA) to negotiation is a process model, based on experimental findings and hundreds of real-world cases, [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] that lays out four steps for negotiating better outcomes while protecting relationships and reputation. A central tenet of the model, and the robust theory that underlies it, is that a vast majority of negotiations in the real world involve parties who have more than one goal or concern in mind and more than one issue that can be addressed in the agreement they reach. The model allows parties to improve their chances of creating an agreement superior to existing alternatives.

Negotiation Dialogue intended to reach an agreement

Negotiation comes from the Latin neg (no) and otsia (leisure) referring to businessmen who, unlike the patricians, had no leisure time in their industriousness; it held the meaning of business until the 17th century when it took on the diplomatic connotation as a dialogue between two or more people or parties intended to reach a beneficial outcome over one or more issues where a conflict exists with respect to at least one of these issues. Thus, negotiation is a process of combining divergent positions into a joint agreement under a decision rule of unanimity.

Contents

MGA is not the same as "win-win" (the idea that all parties must, or will, feel delighted at the end of the negotiation) and does not focus on "being nice" or "finding common ground." Rather, it emphasizes careful analysis and good process management.

A win–win game is game theory which is designed in a way that all participants can profit from the game in one way or the other. In conflict resolution, a win–win strategy is a collaborative strategy and conflict resolution process that aims to accommodate all participants. In economics, it is a voluntary transaction where both parties gain wealth, as in the double thank-you of capitalism.

Steps

The four step Mutual Gains Approach was developed by scholars and practitioners at the Consensus Building Institute, a Cambridge, Massachusetts based company founded by MIT professor Lawrence Susskind. The four steps of the Mutual Gains Approach are:

Cambridge, Massachusetts City in Massachusetts, United States

Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, and part of the Boston metropolitan area.

Lawrence Susskind American urban planner

Lawrence "Larry" E. Susskind is a teacher, trainer, mediator, and urban planner. He is one of the founders of the field of public dispute mediation and is a practicing international mediator through the Consensus Building institute. He has taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 1971.

Preparation

Prepare by understanding interests and alternatives. More specifically, estimate your BATNA and how other parties see theirs (BATNA stands for “best alternative to a negotiated agreement”). Having a good alternative to agreement increases your power at the table. [7] [8] [9] At the same time, work to understand your own side’s interests as well as the interests of the other parties. Interests are the kind of things that a person or organization cares about, in ranked order. [10]

In negotiation theory, the best alternative to a negotiated agreement or BATNA is the most advantageous alternative course of action a party can take if negotiations fail and an agreement cannot be reached. This could include diverse situations, such as suspension of negotiations, transition to another negotiating partner, appeal to the court's ruling, the execution of strikes, and the formation of other forms of alliances. BATNA is the key focus and the driving force behind a successful negotiator. A party should generally not accept a worse resolution than its BATNA. Care should be taken, however, to ensure that deals are accurately valued, taking into account all considerations, such as relationship value, time value of money and the likelihood that the other party will live up to their side of the bargain. These other considerations are often difficult to value, since they are frequently based on uncertain or qualitative considerations, rather than easily measurable and quantifiable factors.

Good negotiators listen for the interests behind positions or the demands that are made. For instance, “I won’t pay more than ninety thousand” is a position; the interests behind the position might include limiting the size of the down payment; a fear that the product or service might prove unreliable; and assumptions about the interest rates attached to future payments. The party might also be failing to articulate other non-financial interests that are nonetheless important.

Value creation

Create value by inventing without committing. Based on the interests uncovered or shared, parties should declare a period of “inventing without committing” during which they advance options by asking “what if…?” By floating different options and “packages” [11] —bundles of options across issues—parties can discover additional interests, create options that had not previously been imagined, and generate opportunities for joint gain by trading across issues they value differently. [12] [13] [14] [15]

Value distribution

At some point in a negotiation, parties have to decide on a final agreement. The more value they have created, the easier this will be, [16] but research suggests that parties default very easily into positional bargaining when they try to finalize details of agreements. [17] Parties should divide value by finding objective criteria that all parties can use to justify their “fair share” of the value created. [18] [19]

By identifying criteria or principles that support or guide difficult allocation decisions, parties at the negotiating table can help the groups or organizations they represent to understand why the final package is not only supportable, but fundamentally “fair.” [20] This improves the stability of agreements, increases the chances of effective implementation, and protects relationships. [21] [22]

Follow through

Follow through by imagining future challenges and their solutions. Parties near the end of difficult negotiations—or those who will “hand off” the agreement to others for implementation—often forget to strengthen the agreement by imagining the kinds of things that could derail it or produce future conflicts or uncertainty. [23] [24] [25]

While it is difficult to focus on potential future challenges, it is wise to include specific provisions in the final document that focus on monitoring the status of commitments; communicating regularly; resolving conflicts or confusions that arise; aligning incentives and resources with the commitments required; and helping other parties who may become a de facto part of implementing the agreement. [26] [27] Including these provisions makes the agreement more robust and greatly assists the parties who will have to live with it and by it. [28] [29]

See also

Related Research Articles

Dispute resolution is the process of resolving disputes between parties. The term dispute resolution may also be used interchangeably with conflict resolution, where conflict styles can be used for different scenarios, and is a judicial system which supply a apparatus for resolution of antagonisms between citizens, between citizens and the government, between two state government and between the centre and state governments.

Roger D. Fisher was Samuel Williston Professor of Law emeritus at Harvard Law School and director of the Harvard Negotiation Project.

Conflict resolution methods and processes involved in facilitating the peaceful ending of conflict and retribution

Conflict resolution is conceptualized as the methods and processes involved in facilitating the peaceful ending of conflict and retribution. Committed group members attempt to resolve group conflicts by actively communicating information about their conflicting motives or ideologies to the rest of the group and by engaging in collective negotiation. Dimensions of resolution typically parallel the dimensions of conflict in the way the conflict is processed. Cognitive resolution is the way disputants understand and view the conflict, with beliefs, perspectives, understandings and attitudes. Emotional resolution is in the way disputants feel about a conflict, the emotional energy. Behavioral resolution is reflective of how the disputants act, their behavior. Ultimately a wide range of methods and procedures for addressing conflict exist, including negotiation, mediation, mediation-arbitration, diplomacy, and creative peacebuilding.

International environmental agreement Treaties and protocols protecting the environment

An international environmental agreement or sometimes environmental protocol, is a type of treaty binding in international law, allowing them to reach an environmental goal. In other words, it is "an intergovernmental document intended as legally binding with a primary stated purpose of preventing or managing human impacts on natural resources." An agreement between two nations is known as a bilateral environmental agreement.

Zone of possible agreement

The zone of possible agreement (ZOPA), or bargaining range, describes the intellectual zone in sales and negotiations between two parties where an agreement can be met which both parties can agree to. Within this zone, an agreement is possible. Outside the zone no amount of negotiation will yield an agreement.

The Program on Negotiation (PON) is a university consortium dedicated to developing the theory and practice of negotiation and dispute resolution. As a community of scholars and practitioners, PON serves a unique role in the world negotiation community. Founded in 1983 as a special research project at Harvard Law School, PON includes faculty, students, and staff from Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Tufts University.

Conflict resolution is any reduction in the severity of a conflict. It may involve conflict management, in which the parties continue the conflict but adopt less extreme tactics; settlement, in which they reach agreement on enough issues that the conflict stops; or removal of the underlying causes of the conflict. The latter is sometimes called "resolution", in a narrower sense of the term that will not be used in this article. Settlements sometimes end a conflict for good, but when there are deeper issues – such as value clashes among people who must work together, distressed relationships, or mistreated members of one's ethnic group across a border – settlements are often temporary.

Dispute Systems Design (DSD) involves the creation of a set of dispute resolution processes to help an organization, institution, nation-state, or other set of individuals better manage a particular conflict and/or a continuous stream or series of conflicts. For an article about systems for dealing with disputes within organizations see also complaint systems.

Alternative dispute resolution includes dispute resolution processes and techniques that act as a means for disagreeing parties to come to an agreement short of litigation. It is a collective term for the ways that parties can settle disputes, with the help of a third party.

A complaint system is a set of procedures used in organizations to address complaints and resolve disputes. Complaint systems in the US have undergone several innovations especially since about 1970 with the advent of extensive workplace regulation. Notably in many countries, conflict management channels and systems have evolved from a major focus on labor-management relations to a much wider purview that includes unionized workers and also managers, non-union employees, professional staff, students, trainees, vendors, donors, customers, etc.

Leonard J. Marcus is an American social scientist and administrator. He is director of the Program for Health Care Negotiation and Conflict Resolution at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health at Harvard University, and founding co-director of the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative, a joint program of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.

Barry C. Dorn, M.D. is Associate Director of the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative (NPLI), a joint program of Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health(HSPH) and the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government and Associate Director of the Program for Health Care Negotiation and Conflict Resolution at HSPH. He is also an Instructor in Public Health Practice at HSPH and Clinical Professor of Orthopedic Surgery at the Tufts University School of Medicine. Additionally, he served on the Faculty of Health Services at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel from 2010-2013. Formerly, he practiced at Excel Orthopedic Specialists. He retired from medical practice in 2007. Dr. Dorn is among the leaders in the development of the health care negotiation and conflict resolution field.

<i>Getting to Yes</i> Book about negotiation methods by Roger Fisher

Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In is a best-selling 1981 non-fiction book by Roger Fisher and William L. Ury. Subsequent editions in 1991 and 2011 added Bruce Patton as co-author. All of the authors were members of the Harvard Negotiation Project. The book made appearances for years on the Business Week bestseller list. The book suggests a method called principled negotiation or "negotiation of merits".

William Ury American writer; co-founder of the International Negotiation Network

William Ury is an American author, academic, anthropologist, and negotiation expert. He co-founded the Harvard Program on Negotiation. Additionally, he helped found the International Negotiation Network with former President Jimmy Carter. Ury is the co-author of Getting to Yes with Roger Fisher, which set out the method of principled negotiation and established the idea of the best alternative to a negotiated agreement (BATNA) within negotiation theory.

Robert Harris Mnookin

Robert Harris Mnookin is an American lawyer, author, and the Samuel Williston Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. He focuses largely on dispute resolution, negotiation, and arbitration and was one of the primary co-arbitrators that resolved a 7-year software rights dispute between IBM and Fujitsu in the 1980s. Mnookin has been the Chair of the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School since 1994.

David Lax

David Lax is currently the Managing Principal of Lax Sebenius, LLC, and a Distinguished Fellow at the Harvard Negotiation Project and a former professor at Harvard Business School.

References

  1. ↑ Susskind, L. and Cruikshank, J. (1987). Breaking the Impasse: consensual approaches to resolve public disputes. Basic Books Inc.: New York, New York.
  2. ↑ Susskind, L., Amundsen, O., Matsuura, M., Kaplan, M., and Lampe, D. (1999). Using Assisted Negotiation to Settle Land Use Disputes, A Guidebook for Public Officials. Consensus Building Institute and Lincoln Institute of Land Policy
  3. ↑ Kirk, E. Orr, P, and Keyes, D. (2008). Environmental Conflict Resolution Practice and Performance: An Evaluation Framework. Conflict Resolution Quarterly 25(3)(2008): 283-301.
  4. ↑ Bingham, G. (1986). Resolving environmental disputes: A decade of experience The Conservation Foundation: Washington, District of Columbia
  5. ↑ Lewicki, R., Gray, B., and Elliott, M. (Eds.). (2002). Making Sense of Intractable Environmental Conflicts: Concepts and Cases (first edition). Washington District of Columbia: Island Press.
  6. ↑ Anderson, J., and Yaffee, S. (1998). Balancing Public Trust and Private Interest: Public Participation in Habitat Conservation Planning, A Summary Report. A research report commissioned by the National Wildlife Federation. University of Michigan Press: Ann Arbor, Michigan.
  7. ↑ Raiffa, H. (1982). Analytical models and empirical results - in The Art and Science of Negotiation. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts. pp. 44-65.
  8. ↑ Fisher, R., Ury, W., & Patton, B. (1991). What if they are more powerful? (developing your BATNA - best alternative to negotiated agreement) - in Getting to YES: negotiating agreement without giving in (2nd Ed.). Penguin Books USA Inc.: New York, New York. pp. 97-107.
  9. ↑ Zartman, W., & Rubin, J (Eds.). (2000). Symmetry and asymmetry in negotiation - in Power and Negotiation. University of Michigan Press: Ann Arbor, Michigan. pp. 271-294.
  10. ↑ Fisher, R., Ury, W., & Patton, B. (1991). Focus on interests, not positions - in Getting to YES: negotiating agreement without giving in (2nd Ed.). Penguin Books USA Inc.: New York, New York. pp. 40-56.
  11. ↑ Susskind, L. & Cruikshank, J. (2006) 3.4 Seek to maximize joint gains through the brainstorming of packages - in Breaking Robert's Rule: the new way to run meetings, build consensus, and get results. Oxford University Press: New York, New York. p. 178.
  12. ↑ Bazerman, M, & Neal, M. A. (1992). The mythical fixed-pie - in Negotiating Rationally. Free Press: New York, New York. pp. 16-22.
  13. ↑ Susskind, L. & Cruikshank, J. (1987) From win lose to all-gain solutions - in Breaking the Impasse: consensual approaches to resolve public disputes. Basic Books Inc.: New York, New York. pp. 33-34.
  14. ↑ Fisher, R., Ury, W., & Patton, B. (1991). Invent options for mutual gain - in Getting to YES: negotiating agreement without giving in (2nd Ed.). Penguin Books USA Inc.: New York, New York. pp. 56-80.
  15. ↑ Lewicki, R., & Litterer, J. (1985). Strategies of integrative bargaining - in Negotiation. Irwin: Homewood, Illinois. pp. 114-123.
  16. ↑ Fisher, R., Ury, W., & Patton, B. (1991). Separate inventing from deciding - in Getting to YES: negotiating agreement without giving in (2nd Ed.). Penguin Books USA Inc.: New York, New York. p. 60.
  17. ↑ Mnookin, R., Pepper, S, & Tulumello, A. (2000). The testion between creating and distributing value - in Beyond Winning: negotiating to create value in deals and disputes. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts. pp. 11-43.
  18. ↑ Fisher, R., Ury, W., & Patton, B. (1991). Insist on using objective criteria - in Getting to YES: negotiating agreement without giving in (2nd Ed.). Penguin Books USA Inc.: New York, New York. pp. 81-94.
  19. ↑ Lewicki, R., & Litterer, J. (1985). Generating viable solutions: moving from positions to needs - in Negotiation. Irwin: Homewood, Illinois. pp. 123-125.
  20. ↑ Mnookin, R., Pepper, S, & Tulumello, A. (2000). The tension between empathy and assertiveness - in Beyond Winning: negotiating to create value in deals and disputes. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts. pp. 44-68.
  21. ↑ Susskind, L. & Cruikshank, J. (1987). Fairness - in Breaking the Impasse: consensual approaches to resolve public disputes. Basic Books Inc.: New York, New York. pp. 21-25
  22. ↑ Caldini, R. (2001). Commitment and consistency: hobgoblins of the mind - in Influence: science and practice (4th Ed). Allyn & Bacon: Needham Heights, Massachusetts. pp. 52-97.
  23. ↑ Susskind, L. & Cruikshank, J. (2006) Anticipate the problems of following through - in Breaking Robert's Rule: the new way to run meetings, build consensus, and get results. Oxford University Press: New York, New York. pp. 130-132.
  24. ↑ Mnookin, R., Pepper, S, & Tulumello, A. (2000). Look to the future: dispute resolution provisions - in Beyond Winning: negotiating to create value in deals and disputes. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts. pp. 270-271.
  25. ↑ Bazerman, M., & Watkins, M. (2004). Preventing predictable surprises - in Predictable surprises: the disasters you should have seen coming, and how to prevent them. Harvard Business School Press: Boston, Massachusetts. pp. 153-258.
  26. ↑ Lax, D. A., & Sebenius, J. K. (2006). Making lasting deals - in 3D Negotiation: powerful tools to change the game in your most important deals. Harvard Business School Press: Boston, Massachusetts. pp. 149-161
  27. ↑ Susskind, L. & Cruikshank, J. (1987). Creating a context for renegotiation - in Breaking the Impasse: consensual approaches to resolve public disputes. Basic Books Inc.: New York, New York. pp. 132-133
  28. ↑ Susskind, L. & Cruikshank, J. (1987). Stability - in Breaking the Impasse: consensual approaches to resolve public disputes. Basic Books Inc.: New York, New York. pp. 31-33
  29. ↑ Susskind, L. & Cruikshank, J. (2006) Crafting "nearly self-enforcing" agreements - in Breaking Robert's Rule: the new way to run meetings, build consensus, and get results. Oxford University Press: New York, New York. pp. 133-153

Bibliography

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.