Conference Summary
The Hewlett Conference for 2000 met at Harvard University
for two and a half days in plenary and break-out sessions.
Approximately 100 persons were in attendance, from over 40
institutions; this was a highly interdisciplinary group,
representing fields of law, business, public policy, and
international relations. Despite the diversity of backgrounds,
attendees formed interest groups around a wide range of
topics, all related to negotiation pedagogy, for example
gender, relational learning, and on-line pedagogy. Some of
these interests emerged from an on-line discussion that PON
moderated, prior to the conference, and some emerged
during the conference, in response to some of the presentations.
This combination of emergent and planned topics created
lively discussion and engagement.
As the schedule on this website shows, there were many opportunities
for participants to meet informally to share their own experiences
as educators and the insights provided by session presenters.
The following paragraphs indicate, very broadly, the content
of the plenary sessions. Participants and interested parties are
invited to reflect or expand on these remarks.
Friday, March 10
The morning of the first day was devoted to the exposition of
the research sponsored by Hewlett and performed by PON-affiliated
scholars in the months prior to the meeting. The research
was distributed to all participants as a bound booklet,
Negotiation Pedagogy: A Research Survey of Four Disciplines
including the
survey instrument used by all teams and a preface by Sara Cobb,
Executive Director of PON. Dr. Cobb emphasized that the reflexive
relation between learning and negotiation highlights several
challenges for teachers of negotiation, including the nature
of the student/teacher relationship, the role of "expert knowledge"
in the classroom, the structuring of environments that foster
learning, etc. Following Dr. Cobb’s introduction, the research
teams in the areas of law, international relations, public policy,
and business each presented their findings.
Robert H. Mnookin, Chair of the PON Steering Committee and
Robert Bordone, Thaddeus R. Beal Lecturer on Law, reported
on the teaching of negotiation at major American law schools.
Their investigations confirmed that while the core concepts
taught at the law schools were very similar, some differences were
notable. These included the degree of emphasis on skill
development, theory, and self-reflection and awareness;
ideological slant (problem-solving versus principled negotiation);
and the amount of instructional and technological resources devoted
to negotiation teaching. Despite many differences at the
micro-level, law schools teaching of negotiation was very
similar at the macro level.
Negotiation teaching in the discipline of international relations
was discussed by Eileen F. Babbitt, Assistant Professor of
International Politics at the Fletcher School of Law and
Diplomacy, Tufts University, and Paul A. N. Hazell, graduate
student at the Fletcher School. They found little that was
universal in the programs they surveyed. The most pronounced
difference lay in the emphasis on skill building versus conceptual
analysis. There were also significant differences in the
organizing principles of each course and the key concepts stressed
by instructors; teaching methods; and the attention devoted to
culture and gender. The investigators concluded that this
diversity stems from the widely divergent disciplinary backgrounds
of instructors in international studies.
Lawrence Susskind, Ford Professor of Urban and Environmental
Policy at MIT, and Boyd Fuller, a doctoral candidate in the
MIT Department of Urban Studies presented the findings for
teaching negotiation in public policy programs. They found
a great similarity in the concepts and pedagogical techniques
used by their respondents. However, they varied considerably
in how deeply these concepts and skills were pursued. The
majority of those surveyed also cover aspects of facilitation
and mediation in their negotiation courses. Susskind and
Fuller noted that their respondents all were very enthusiastic
about learning more about negotiation pedagogy, and regularly
exchange syllabi.
Michael Wheeler, Professor of Management at the Harvard
Business School, Ron S. Fortgang, Fellow at the HBS Negotiation
Roundtable, and Guhan Subramanian, Lecturer in Business Administration
at HBS, presented the findings for teaching negotiation in schools
of business and management. They identified negotiation issues
that may be of special significance in business Schools, including
the coordination of external dealings and internal decision
making and cultural differences. These researchers found common
themes appearing across basic courses, and certain fundamental
elements in advanced courses as well. However, significant
variations emerged related to the importance of the context
of problems and those trying to solve them. While a range
of pedagogical techniques are used, all programs emphasized
student reflection on their work. Most also are using computer
technologies in their course work. The business school team
focused on the future, noting the emerging role of negotiation
as central to management education.
The afternoon session on "Innovations in Teaching Methods"
was led by Michael Elliott, of the Georgia Institute of Technology
and Guhan Subramanian provided a cross-domain analysis of the
issues related to methods of teaching negotiation based on
the pedagogy survey, presented in the morning.
Through comparative analysis, they identified three categories
of methods: (1) experiential, (2) self-reflective and (3)
analytic/conceptual. Following the presentation of this
analysis, they asked participants to form small groups based
on these categories. In these groups people discussed their
methods and shared materials. They came back to the large
group and reported the dilemmas they identified with these
methods, as well as materials that were useful in addressing
these dilemmas.
Saturday, March 11
The Saturday morning session on "Culture and Gender in Negotiation"
moderated by Lawrence Susskind, featured presentations by
Carrie Menkel-Meadow, of the Georgetown University Law Center;
Maria Volpe, of John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and
Kevin Avruch, of George Mason University. Menkel-Meadow
augmented her discussion of gender factors in negotiation
with a short film of students in a simulation, and analyzed
the gendered behavior of the participants. Maria Volpe
explicated ways in which she includes diversity and multiple
cultures into her teaching approach. Kevin Avruch critiqued
traditional approaches to culture in negotiation training,
favoring instead an approach emphasizing identity in relationships.
The afternoon session on "Teaching Interpersonal Skills" was
lead by Robert Mnookin, Keith Allred, and Sara Cobb.
Professor Mnookin presented the Interpersonal Skills (IPS)
Exercise used in his intensive workshops at Harvard Law School.
Douglas Stone, an affiliate of the Harvard Negotiation Project
( HNP) at PON, facilitated a demonstration of the exercise,
played by Sara Cobb and Bruce Patton, also of HNP. The
demonstration was designed to show how IPS enables people to
explore interpersonal relations. Professor Mnookin’s assumption,
enacted in the training and in courses given at the Harvard Law
School, is that how we perceive self-in-relation-to-other affects
the interaction in negotiation. Understanding how their perceptions
of self and other affects interaction gives negotiators leverage
in terms of managing the interaction.
Also in the afternoon, Keith Allred , of Harvard’s Kennedy
School, presented a skill-training tool he has developed which
allows people to compare their perceptions of themselves as
negotiators with the perceptions of other people who have
known them in that context. This method of collecting data
self-perceptions exemplifies the important role that others
play in the development of our self of competence, as negotiators.
Sunday, March 12
The meeting culminated in a plenary session on "Innovations
in Negotiation Pedagogy Evaluation." Presentations were made
by Robert McKersie, Professor at the MIT Sloan School of
Management; Leigh Thompson and Jeff Loewenstein, of the
J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern
University, Joel Cutcher-Gershefeld, and Nils Fonstad, doctoral
candidate at the Sloan School. Professor McKersie and Dr.
Cutcher-Gershenfeld led an interactive discussion of how they
use iterative evaluation to continually monitor and refine
their course on negotiation in labor-management relations.
The noted that the just-in-time course development that they
use in training enables them to stay very close to participants’
practical "on the ground" concerns. In theory, this should lead
to long-term learning as students are able to actually learn from
their practice. Mr. Fonstad addressed this question in his
research on the impact of negotiation training on participants.
There were multiple findings from this research that suggested
new directions for both designing and evaluating negotiation training.
Professors Thompson and Loewenstein presented their research
demonstrating that if students are asked to compare cases, their
ability to apply their learning to a third case is significantly
increased. They have examined multiple facets of this finding,
using experimental design. Their general finding is that students
learn better when they make comparisons. There was considerable
discussion over the implications of this research for teaching
methods. Faculty from business schools that use the case method
pondered these implications, as did faculty from law schools,
who use cases very differently from the way they are used in
business schools. Faculty from international relations programs
were struck by the difficulty of using comparative cases, as
history and context dramatically influence the evolution of
international conflicts.
Following the presentations, small groups organized by discipline
discussed prospects for how teaching could be improved or augmented
in several conceptual and topical areas. Following reports by each
group, the entire conference compared the small-group conclusions
about directions for development of negotiation pedagogy.
Faculty from business schools concluded that the use of case
comparison was the most important method to develop. Faculty
from law schools agreed, following the principles proposed by
keynote speaker Howard Gardner, that it would be important to
develop processes to assess the different kinds of intelligences
that students bring to negotiation courses. Also, they agreed that,
funding permitting, it would be useful to videotape students
negotiating, as a data base for feedback and coaching.
Faculty from international relations agreed that it would be
important to utilize cases that were long-term, as so much
of the international conflicts are "deep" in time. The also
noted that it would be useful for students to be required to
attend cultural events, enabling them to develop recognition and
respect for other cultures. Because so many creative ideas
were advanced, the findings from the small group discussions
were perhaps not as important as the opportunity for faculty
to share their ideas, their concerns, and their hopes for
the development of negotiation pedagogy.
