Chapter 2
Distributive Bargaining

What makes integrative negotiation different

Why Negotiators need to know Distributive bargaining

Distributive bargaining situation

Role of alternatives to a negotiated agreement

Fundamental Strategies

Key to the strategies

Tactical tasks of negotiators

Manage the other party’s impressions

Modify the other party’s perceptions

Manipulate the actual costs of delay or termination

Access the other party's target, resistance point and costs of terminating negotiations

Positions Taken During Negotiations

Opening offers

Opening stance

Initial concessions

The role of concessions

Patterns of concession making

Final offers (making a commitment)

Making Concessions

Label your concessions

What you have given up

Emphasize the benefits to the other side

Don’t give up on your original demands too hastily

Demand and define Reciprocity

Make contingent concessions

Make concessions in installments $20 or $10x2

Starting points (initial offers)

Target points

Resistance points (walkaway)

Alternative outcomes

If alternatives are attractive, negotiators can:


-Set their goals higher


-Make fewer concessions

If there are no attractive alternatives:
Negotiators have much less bargaining power

Indirectly

Directly

Determine information opponent used to set:

Target

Resistance points

Opponent reveals the information


INFORMATION is KEY to Negotiation. 2.1

Screen your behavior:

Say and do as little as possible

“Silence is golden when answering questions”

Direct action to alter impressions
Present facts that enhance one’s position

Make outcomes appear less attractive

Make the cost of obtaining goals appear higher

Make demands and positions appear more or less attractive to the other party – whichever suits your needs

Plan disruptive action

Form an alliance with outsiders

Schedule manipulations

Raise the costs of delay to the other party

Involve (or threaten to involve) other parties who can influence the outcome in your favor

One party is usually more vulnerable to delaying than the other e.g start neg on arrival after long trip

Without them, there is either capitulation or deadlock

The pattern contains valuable information

“This is all I can do”

Where will you start?

Exaggerated or modest?

What is your attitude?

Competitive? Moderate?

Commitments: Tactical Considerations

Establishing a commitment

Preventing the other party from committing prematurely

Their commitment reduces your flexibility

Way to create commitment

Public pronouncement

Linking with an outside base

Increase the prominence of demands

Reinforce the threat or promise

Ways to abandon a committed position

Plan a way out

Let it die silently

Restate the commitment in more general terms

Minimize the damage to the relationship if the other backs off

Closing a Deal

Provide alternatives (2 or 3 packages)

Assume the close

Split the difference

Exploding offers

Deal sweeteners

Dealing with Typical Hardball Tactics

Ignore them

Discuss them

Respond in kind

Co-opt the other party (befriend them)

Good Cop/Bad Cop

Lowball/Highball

Bogey (playing up an issue of little importance)

The Nibble (asking for a number of small concessions too)

Chicken

Intimidation

Aggressive Behavior

Snow Job (overwhelm the other party with information)

Focus on commonalties rather than differences

Address needs and interests, not positions

Commit to meeting the needs of all involved parties

Exchange information and ideas

Invent options for mutual gain

Use objective criteria to set standards

Interdependent situations that are distributive require knowing how this works in order to do well

Need to know how to counter the effects of the strategies

Every situation has the potential to require skills at the “claiming-value” stage including integrative