Volume 3 of the Negotiator’s Desk Reference is public. All chapters are linked below:

 

The Negotiator’s Desk Reference is designed to provide the most up-to-date negotiation writings possible, from as many disciplines as possible. But not everything needs to be updated equally often. And not all of our past contributors were able to update writings originally contributed for our 2006 Negotiator’s Fieldbook.

Yet some of those writings continue to be valuable resources and unequalled elsewhere. We have therefore arranged with the American Bar Association, the publisher of our 2006 work, to offer this Volume 3. It consists of twelve chapters, republished unaltered (except for chapter and page numbers) from our Negotiator’s Fieldbook.

We very much appreciate the ABA’s cooperation.

 

102. Identity: More than Meets the “I”

Daniel L. Shapiro
​How can you expect to get good results in a negotiation if you give little thought to who you really are, and to who your counterpart is? Shapiro analyzes the research on identity, showing how you can predict the likely reactions of your counterpart to some kinds of proposals—as well as your own propensity to avoid some kinds of proposals that might be to your advantage.

Linda L. Putnam
Certainly you know how to communicate; you’re a negotiator, after all. But what if you’re trying to decide whether or how to threaten to walk away? How can you communicate to your best possible advantage at some other particularly sensitive moment? Putnam examines three different areas of communications research—negotiation strategies, language analysis and process patterns—to explain that how we say things is often as important as what we say. 

104. On Bargaining Power
Russell Korobkin
Strip away concepts of power based in your opponent’s relative wealth compared to yours, or based on other popular myths, says Korobkin here. What are you going to do if there is no agreement? What is the other party likely to do? Answer those questions, and you will know who really has how much power in this situation.

105. Indigenous Experiences in Negotiation
Loretta Kelly 
In a contribution likely to shake many readers’ implicit assumptions, an Australian Aboriginal mediator uses a detailed examination of one key type of case to examine how negotiators who make the common Western assumptions can trip over their own feet as soon as they find themselves negotiating with people who operate from totally different cultural assumptions. The lessons from this chapter are relevant even for ordinary negotiators with no plans to go to the outback.

106. Miswanting
Chris Guthrie & David Sally
If you’re assuming that a settlement will make you (or your client) happy, it’s time to question that assumption. By explaining the work of positive psychology (or what makes people happy), these authors explore how people often end up misdiagnosing their own goals. But if you understand your own and your client’s pressures toward misidentifying what you need out of a negotiation, you are better prepared to set goals that will actually work for you both.

107. Heuristics and Biases at the Bargaining Table
Russell Korobkin & Chris Guthrie
So you still think that negotiation is based on “rational” thought? This chapter describes several key aspects of psychology and economics which impact our behavior—whether we like it or not and whether we know it or not. The authors summarize extensive work on how cognitive biases and other “non-rational” decision-making can be recognized, and then used to help reach the agreement you want.

108. Game Theory Behaves
David F. Sally & Gregory Todd Jones
Almost everybody who has taken a basic course in negotiation in the last 20 years has encountered basic game theory, at least to the extent of the widely used “prisoner’s dilemma” games. But game theoreticians have been hard at work, and have come up with some disturbing findings that go way beyond the simple strategic calculations in the prisoner’s dilemma game and its equivalents. Sally and Jones analyze what has been discovered, and what it means for negotiators who need to think at least one step ahead of their counterpart and one step beyond their own biases. And if you’re a real negotiator, you’re tough enough not to be scared off by a mere equation or two.

109. Untapped Power: Emotions in Negotiation
Daniel L. Shapiro
To many negotiators and mediators an “emotional issue” sounds like one with no real substance to it, yet one that’s liable to damage the situation at any moment. Shapiro shows how unsophisticated that view is. Emotions, recognized and unrecognized, regularly trap professional negotiators as well as clients, when these emotions can be anticipated and dealt with constructively. Not only that, but there are positive uses of emotion in negotiation.

110. Creativity and Problem-Solving
Jennifer Gerarda Brown
It’s routine for people to recognize that negotiations demand creativity. It also seems routine for negotiations to result in rather uncreative solutions, in which many opportunities for a better deal all around were missed. In this chapter, Brown suggests some ways to break out of the predictable—and to get your counterpart to do so too.

111. What’s in a Frame?
Marcia Caton Campbell & Jayne Seminare Docherty
How you conceive what your negotiation is all about, and how the other side perceives it, can be a complete mismatch resulting in mutual frustration. Here, Caton Campbell and Docherty address the all-important question of framing, providing a set of ways to think through your assumptions and those of the other side. You may want to read this chapter in close conjunction with those by Heen & Stone (Vol. 1, Ch. 26) and Coleman et al (Vol. 2, Chs. 83-85.)

112. The Poverty of Buyer and Seller
Kevin Avruch
In a world in which negotiating can implicate your most important values, Avruch points out that the most common mental model of negotiators is that of buyer and seller. Yet both our most intimate and our greatest negotiations have little to do with the whole basis of buyer-and-seller ideas. Avruch offers a way at least to begin to rethink, to find our way out of this trap.

113. When Not to Negotiate
Gabriella Blum & Robert H. Mnookin
“I shouldn’t enter into negotiations at all” is an instinctive reaction of many disputants.  Mnookin and Blum provide a useful theoretical framework to demonstrate what a party should consider before making this decision. While they suggest that sometimes it can be entirely rational to refuse to negotiate, their framework shows how disputants may often make distorted assessments, exaggerating the costs and underestimating the benefits of entering into negotiations.

Errata