Group Decisions Often Require Negotiations

Understanding Negotiation

When negotiations are made in the team process, an integrative bargaining strategy is used in order to create the best outcome for all parties concerned. The strategy places the goals of all stakeholders or company goals first. Through this commonality arises an opportunity to create value for all parties because each party can bring a benefit to the table (Lewicki, Saunders, & Barry, 2006). The negotiation strategy begins with the parties defining the issues and how these issues impact each group.

The focus of the negotiation strategy is to alleviate the problems and providing solutions. This can be a painstaking process but ultimately one that is built on stakeholder value (Lewicki, Saunders, & Barry, 2006). This process also allows for stakeholders to buy into the idea rather than feeling as though the decision was forced upon them.

There are a number of challenges to negotiation. One of the largest challenges is the fact that not all problems or issues can be negotiated fairly or equitably. For example, workplaces have different departments that serve different purposes, and these innate differences often lend themselves to different forms of treatment. For example, the IT department may be much more collaborative than an accounting department.

References

Lewicki, R., Saunders, D., and Barry, B. (2006) Negotiation (5th ed.) McGraw Hill, New York, NY.