Negotiation and Conflict Management

Spring 2009

Texts (required):  Essentials of Negotiation, 4^th ed. by Lewicki, Barry,  and Saunders.  2007 Irwin.

Negotiation: Readings, Exercises, and Cases, 5^th ed. by Lewicki, Barry, and Saunders. 2007 Irwin.

Objectives for the course:

When most people think of negotiation they think of unions, warring countries, and other large and very consequential events on a grand scale.  The truth of the matter is that negotiation is an integral part of everyday life.  It takes place in business settings between co-workers, supervisors and subordinates, and managers and their peers.  Negotiations also occur every day between parents, parents and children, friends, landlords and tenants, consumers and businesses, and more.  Negotiation is a pervasive part of everyday life.

 Since negotiation is such a central part of our lives it is impossible to avoid (though many would prefer to avoid it).  However it is a basic life skill that can be learned, improved, and used to your advantage.  The primary goal of this course is to help you become a more effective negotiator.  You will accomplish this by learning and practicing negotiating skills that you can immediately put to use in both your professional and personal life. 

By the time you have successfully completed this course you will: 1.) have increased your personal understanding of your strengths and weaknesses as a negotiator and learned  ways to address the areas you wish to improve in a positive manner, 2.) have an understanding of how to effectively prepare for a negotiation, 3.) have learned multiple approaches to resolving negotiations, 4.) have developed a deeper understanding of basic negotiation skills and had the opportunity to integrate these skills into your “tool kit”.  This will be accomplished by providing you a forum to both learn and practice the skills necessary to facilitate your success in becoming a more skilled and successful negotiator.

 Course Format

 Unlike many other educational experiences, this course is experiential in nature.  That is to say you will be engaged an interactive environment that includes case analysis, role plays, and discussions where your participation is a large component of the learning experience.  There will also be lectures and in class discussions to cover the material that is necessary to learn to provide sufficient background understanding of negotiations and the process of negotiation.

 There will be opportunities to demonstrate your understanding of the material and concepts through examinations, reflection papers, planning for negotiations, and keeping a journal of your negotiations and the lessons learned from each one.  Each negotiation is an opportunity to learn both from our successes and mistakes as well as learning from our opponent’s successes and mistakes.  As it is in most other endeavors in life you will get results out of the class in proportion to what you invest in it.  If you invest time and energy you will become a much more proficient negotiator and you will see your outcomes improve.

 Reflection Papers:  There will be four papers required during the course of the semester that will be your opportunity to communicate the insights you have gained through the process of negotiation with your peers.  This will enable you to accomplish two significant goals.  First you will reinforce the learning that takes place as a result of debriefing your negotiations and second you will effectively demonstrate that you have command of the course material and its application in a negotiation you have completed.

 Examinations:  There will be a mid term and final examination.  The content of the exam will cover the readings and lectures for the class.  The examinations will have 27 multiple choice questions and three short essay questions.  Of the 27 multiple choice questions only 25 must be correct to get 100% of the possible points for that part of the exam.  This is because research has shown that 5% of multiple choice questions are judged to be ambiguous or there is perceived to be more than one correct answer by those taking the exam.  In order to be fair and to eliminate the debates after exams about these issues I have adopted this format.  The exam is weighted 50/50 between the essay questions and the multiple choice questions.  You will have at least one week to study for the essay questions from a pool of possible questions.  Three questions from the pool will be selected at random to appear on the exam.

 Journal:  You will be required to keep a journal that describes negotiations you engage in throughout the semester.  At a minimum you will need to include all of the in class negotiations and at least three out of class negotiations you are involved in during the semester.  This is not to be an exhaustive blow-by-blow description of the negotiation.  Rather it is to be a very brief description of your planning process, your goal, limit, BATNA, and strategy along with your assessment of your opponent’s goal, limit, BATNA, and strategy.  The outcome of the negotiation will be included and a brief summary of what worked and did not work for the respective sides during the course of the negotiation.  Finally there will be a summary of lessons learned (or reinforced as the case may be).  By doing this you will learn to debrief negotiations effectively and maximize your potential for learning from your and your opponent’s mistakes and also things that worked well.

 Participation:  I reserve the right to dock any student up to 10% of the total points possible in the class (or any other amount less than 10% of the total points possible in the class) if s/he fails to attend and participate in the class as a serious student.  If you are going to miss a class for any reason it is your responsibility to inform me at least 48 hours prior to the absence that you will not be in class and the reason for missing the class.  I am generally lenient about students having time conflicts as long as it is very limited.  If you cannot commit to be in class please drop the class.  Negotiation exercises require people to show up and it is not fair to the other students to fail to attend regularly.

 Study Groups:  I strongly encourage you to work with others in the class to gain a deeper understanding of the course concepts and to review for the exams.  An approach that is both effective and acceptable is to form a group of 3-5 students and to work on the reading assignments together.  All members of the group need to read all of the material.  Individual members can create notes from the various readings and distribute them to the others in the group and the group can discuss what they got out of the readings.  This will reinforce the material and it will lighten the note-taking load at the same time.  When studying for an exam have all members develop an answer for each review question and then meet and discuss you answers.  You will learn from your teammates’ approach and all will develop better answers as a result.  If you fail to develop your own answers and only focus on a subset of the review questions your grade will most likely be adversely impacted because you will not learn the material as well nor will you be as well prepared for the exam.

 Extra Credit:  On occasion participants will be needed for research projects in the university.  As opportunities present themselves I will announce them in class.  Any student who volunteers to be a participant in a research project will receive from 1% to 5% of the total points possible in the course for participating in the research depending on the effort involved to fulfill his/her role in the project.

  Academic Honesty:  The university policy regarding academic honesty is found in the Fact Finder.  My policy is that any form of academic dishonesty will not be tolerated and if any student is found to be cheating or engaging in any other academically dishonest activities in this class that student will receive a failing grade for the class.

 Course Points Summary: 

 In Class Protocol:

 The primary purpose for taking this class is to further your understanding of the subject matter and to become proficient in using it.  Therefore to have an environment that is conducive to learning and free of as many distractions as possible you are required to observe the following guidelines.  The use of cell phones, pagers, watches set to chime, iPods, walkmans, or any other electronic device that creates any kind of noise or any other sort of distraction to yourself or others is not allowed to be used in the classroom.  If you carry any of these devices into the classroom please silence them prior to the start of class.  Please be considerate of your classmates, they will appreciate it.

 All work is due as noted in the syllabus.  Assignments are to be handed in at the beginning of class in the classroom or prior to the beginning of class the day it is due via e-mail.  Work that is handed in any other time or place will be docked points unless you have made prior arrangements with the instructor at least 48 hours in advance.  I will accept late work, but it will be awarded a reduced grade.  Work that is handed in less than one week late will be reduced by 10% of the total points for the assignment.  Overdue work that is handed in from one week to two weeks late will be reduced by 20% of the total points for the assignment.  Work handed in over two weeks late will be reduced by 40% of the total points for the assignment.

Tentative Course Schedule:

The course schedule, assignments, and content will be held to the information contained in this document as closely as possible.  It is understood that changes may be made time to time to meet the needs of the class at the discretion of the instructor.  This document is specifically not intended to constitute a contract between the instructor and the students in the class.

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