Negotiations and Conflict Resolution Life Skills and Research Project
Part I: ‘Tactical Tasks’ for Distributive Negotiation
Distributive negotiation is a situation, where both the participating parties wish to seek maximum share from a resource (French, 2011). This situation, where the limited resource needs to be
distributed among more than one party, negotiation becomes the only tool serving as a representative’s rescue. It is important to understand the distributive situation first, in order to know
‘why it needs tactics and not simple strategies to handle distributive negotiation?’. Distributive negotiation is not a win-win case, but strategic persuasion of one party to let the other party settle
down in less benefits. Tactics help in maximizing the value when the resource is limited and business relationships are not important.
Before presenting some of the distributive negotiation tactics, it is important to mention that the goal of a negotiator is ‘not’ to let all participants go back happily, but to take the deal to the closest
point of other party’s resistance. Before listing the tactics for distributive negotiation, important is to highlight the ultimate goals they aim to achieve. The first involves advance assessment of the
termination-cost of the other party. The second is to direct the other party’s understanding about your negotiation outcome value. The third is to modify the belief of the other party about his/her
personal outcome values. Finally, the fourth tactic would be to manipulate the other party’s understanding about the cost of aborting the negotiation process (Schermerhorn, 2009).
After understanding the only four channels of converting a deal in the distributive situation, the next steps would be to get into the detail of each one and see how to practically participate. On the basis
of these four categories of tactics, sub-categories involve some more. Hardball tactics are adopted by a party aiming to pressurize the other party to do things not prefered otherwise. The hardball tactics
might be common, but usually work successfully with the parties, which are not very sharp in handling negotiation process (French, 2011). Among hardball tactics, various other tactics are listed. Some of
them are Good Guy/Bad Guy, Highball/Lowball, Bogey, Chicken, Nibble, Snow Job, Intimidation, and Aggressive Behaviour (Lewicki et al., 2013). For this document, three tactics have been picked and
elaborated.
The first hardball tactic to handle a distributive bargaining situation is ‘Good Guy/Bad Guy’ technique. In this tactic, one individual from the first party pretends to be a ‘Good Guy’, and succeeds in convincing
the other party that he is working in the favour of the second one. However, as the deal is about to close, the pretending-to-be good guy matches up with the first team (also addressed as bad guy(s)) and
strikes the deal. This technique usually persuades the second party to direct decisions, which end up in devastating consequences, if not handled smartly.
The second tactic is all about making ‘too high’ or ‘too low’ offer, also known as the ‘Highball/Lowball’ technique. To understand how this technique is used in a realtime scenario, an example must be provided.
Someone is trying to …
