Conflict Resolution

A 62-year-old salesman believes he has convincing evidence that his boss passed him over for a promotion because of his age. What options does he have? He could let the matter drop and perhaps look for another job. He could file an employment-discrimination lawsuit. Or, if his company offers mediation services, he could have the … Read How to Manage Conflict at Work

Suppose that you and your negotiating counterpart become deadlocked after exchanging a series of offers and counteroffers. With each of you anchored on very different positions, you can’t seem to find a solution that pleases you both. … Learn More About This Program

This spring, the estate of Harper Lee, the deceased author of the classic American novel To Kill a Mockingbird, sued the producers of a Broadway stage adaptation of the novel for deviating too much from its character and plot. The story, as reported in the New York Times, highlights the value of exploring every viable … Learn More About This Program

Business transactions between family members and friends can be difficult. Close ties are generally founded on the expectation that we’ll look out for each other’s welfare and not “keep score.” In business relationships, by contrast, we expect to be compensated based on how much effort, time, and money we expend. We’re likely to experience a … Learn More About This Program

We might hope that when we adopt negotiation best practices—such as spending lots of time preparing and asking questions at the table—we would achieve consistently strong results in our negotiations. Yet as most of us have experienced, our outcomes and personal satisfaction can vary a great deal from one negotiation to the next. Why?

First, individual … Learn More About This Program

When closing a deal, new business partners are typically optimistic about the path ahead. But somewhere down the line, conflict is almost inevitable. One party may miss a deadline. The two sides may interpret contract terms differently. Changing economic conditions may make it difficult for one side to uphold its end of the deal.

When a … Learn More About This Program

In negotiation, learning from past mistakes is a critical skill. In our July issue, we detailed errors that Republicans made in their initial attempt to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act in the House of Representatives. Although the House narrowly passed its American Health Care Act (AHCA) in May, Senate Republicans repeated many of … Learn More About This Program

Conventional wisdom warns us against doing business with family members. Negotiations between people linked by close ties can result in hurt feelings, damaged relationships, or simply the nagging feeling that a better deal was within reach.

Yet circumstances sometimes require us to negotiate financial matters with a relative. In other situations, someone close to you may … Learn More About This Program

For Republican leaders, the desire to repeal President Barack Obama’s signature health-care legislation, the Affordable Care Act (ACA), has been a unifying goal for seven years. So it was no surprise that after Donald Trump won the presidency and the Republicans retained both houses of Congress in the 2016 election, they made health-care reform their … Read How the “Party of No” Didn’t Get to Yes

We know that anger leads negotiators to make riskier choices and blame others when things go wrong. In a new study, researchers Jeremy A. Yip and Maurice E. Schweitzer find that anger also leads us to engage in greater deception in negotiation—even when it’s not our counterpart who angered us.
In one of the study’s experiments, … Read Negotiation Research: A Downside of Anger