Teaching (And Learning) Negotiation: Is There Still Room For Innovation?

Abstract

Negotiation is often considered as an art requiring specific skills and competencies that can only be practiced by talented or gifted people. Therefore learning about negotiation could be considered useless as it necessitates a certain aptitude revealed in situations that are always different, depending on many conditional aspects like the actors, interests, context or nature of conflict. Most practitioners and future negotiators are looking for prescriptive advices on how to lead effective negotiation. Training comes frequently as an answer to the question and simulation exercises can be, in that sense, adequate and powerful pedagogical tools. Our intention in this paper is to explore several paths based on some of the most fundamental elements and driving forces of negotiation: trust, stakes and power.