Negotiations in the Real World

Our ethics and decision making class has ended our reading of Judgement in Managerial Decision Making by Bazerman and Moore. This book has made me consider some very important factors in my life. One of the biggest insights I will take from this book is negotiations and it aspects. For example, don't show your entire hand in the beginning. One of the best examples of this is too much information at critical times. Hiring for a new job. Here is a link to a great blog/tweet about salaries in an interview- Salary Negotiations During the Interview.


This is only one point of negotiations. There are many parts to go with this. For example, biases are the first thing to pop in my mind now. Not who has them, but to just make sure I'm aware that we all have biases. Theses biases have many ways to effect the way negotiations are handled. Once both sides understands that there are biases on either side is only when you can make it easier to come to an agreement. I did not say a conclusion, but an AGREEMENT. This is when you know what your Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement (BATNA) is. In other words to put emotions to the side and know exactly what your bottom line is. For example, me and my family tested BATNA tonight. We have been looking for a vehicle for 1 and half years. My wife visited Overstock.com for a vehicle. Since we are in the "O club" we get extra perks. We receive special on various items so we decided to try the automotive category. We input the data on their site and received a confirmation with a price quote and expiration date of today. To make a long story short, we would not take less then $4000, and they said they would give us $4200. This knowledge that had been gained told us that they were coming back higher than our BATNA. The work had already been done. If we did not discuss and have our BATNA, we would probably try to get higher and walked away from a great deal.

There are many aspects to negotiations, but it seems to me knowing your BATNA greatly impacts the success of your outcome. From my example, I feel satisfied in what I expected/needed in the value of what I had.