Prioritizing

1
Prioritizing Framing Issues

• MGT 5374 Negotiation Conflict Management
• Section 002
• Class 5 (Part 2)
• John D. Blair, PhD
• Georgie G. William B. Snyder Professor in
  Management

2
Goal Setting Contingencies

• Upon completion of intelligence gathering, a
  negotiator is ready to set goals and identify
  contingencies
• What is the ideal outcome?
• What are contingency goals in case the ideal is
  unattainable?

3
Example Career Search

• Imagine you have just visited with several
  companies at your University career fair. Youre
  excited about the possibilities with 3 companies
  but know the job market is competitive.
• Identify your ideal job/company
• Identify your contingency goals

4
BATNA Best Alternative to Negotiated Agreement

• What will I do if we cant come to an agreement
  that meets my needs?
• Prepare for instances where the achievement of
  the ideal and/or contingency outcomes are not
  possible
• Identify a fall-back position
• Avoid a sense of failure and desperation
• Provides a safety net

5
Staying on Track

• Skilled negotiators stay on track through
  preparation
• Identify possible irrelevant claims (e.g.
  fallacies)
• Anticipate issues
• Prepare for diversion
• Identify effective ways to respond
• Identify whether the claim (argument) is relevant
  to the outcome

6
Negotiating Issue Priorities

• Negotiators may face times when the other party
  presents issues that havent been anticipated
  and/or raises issues that are unimportant or
  irrelevant to the primary issue
• Various options to consider (e.g. dismiss,
  put-off to later)
• Issue folding
• Seek a win-win approach rather than win-lose

7
Issue Prioritization
Negotiator 1
Negotiator 2
Issue B
Issue C
Issue A
Issue B
Issue C
Issue A
Common Prioritization
Fold C into B due to relatedness
High priority
Interest
Disinterest
8
Team Negotiations

• Negotiations with teams present new challenges
• Focus on task
• Focus on relationships
• Seek balance
• Hot teams devoted to task but not one another
  and may be confrontational, challenging and
  critical
• Warm teams focused on task but also concerned
  with relationships
• Give group members opportunity to voice opinions
  and seek consensus

9
Perception

• Perception is
• The process by which individuals connect to their
  environment.
• A complex physical and psychological process
  
  
• A sense-making process

10
The Role of Perception

• The process of ascribing meaning to messages and
  events is strongly influenced by the perceivers
  current state of mind, role, and comprehension of
  earlier communications
• People interpret their environment in order to
  respond appropriately
• The complexity of environments makes it
  impossible to process all of the information
• People develop shortcuts to process information
  and these shortcuts create perceptual errors

11
Perceptual Distortion

• Four major perceptual errors
• Stereotyping
• Halo effects
• Selective perception
• Projection

12
Stereotyping and Halo Effects

• Stereotyping
• Is a very common distortion
• Occurs when an individual assigns attributes to
  another solely on the basis of the others
  membership in a particular social or demographic
  category
• Halo effects
• Are similar to stereotypes
• Occur when an individual generalizes about a
  variety of attributes based on the knowledge of
  one attribute of an individual

13
Selective Perceptionand Projection

• Selective perception
• Perpetuates stereotypes or halo effects
• The perceiver singles out information that
  supports a prior belief but filters out contrary
  information
• Projection
• Arises out of a need to protect ones own
  self-concept
• People assign to others the characteristics or
  feelings that they possess themselves

14
Framing

• Frames
• Represent the subjective mechanism through which
  people evaluate and make sense out of situations
• Lead people to pursue or avoid subsequent actions
• Focus, shape and organize the world around us
• Make sense of complex realities
• Define a person, event or process
• Impart meaning and significance

15
How Frames Work in Negotiation

• Negotiators can use more than one frame
• Mismatches in frames between parties are sources
  of conflict
• Particular types of frames may lead to particular
  types of arguments
• Specific frames may be likely to be used with
  certain types of issues
• Parties are likely to assume a particular frame
  because of various factors

16
Interests, Rights, and Power

• Parties in conflict use one of three frames
• Interests people talk about their positions
  but often what is at stake is their underlying
  interests
• Rights people may be concerned about who is
  right that is, who has legitimacy, who is
  correct, and what is fair
• Power people may wish to resolve a conflict on
  the basis of who is stronger

17
The Frame of an Issue Changes as the Negotiation
Evolves

• Negotiators tend to argue for stock issues or
  concerns that are raised every time the parties
  negotiate
• Each party attempts to make the best possible
  case for his or her preferred position or
  perspective
• Frames may define major shifts and transitions in
  a complex overall negotiation
• Multiple agenda items operate to shape issue
  development

18
Some Advice about Problem Framing for Negotiators

• Frames shape what the parties define as the key
  issues and how they talk about them
• Both parties have frames
• Frames are controllable, at least to some degree
• Conversations change and transform frames in ways
  negotiators may not be able to predict but may be
  able to control
• Certain frames are more likely than others to
  lead to certain types of processes and outcomes

19
Cognitive Biases in Negotiation

• Negotiators have a tendency to make systematic
  errors when they process information. These
  errors, collectively labeled cognitive biases,
  tend to impede negotiator performance.

20
Cognitive Biases

• Irrational escalation of commitment
• Mythical fixed-pie beliefs
• Anchoring and adjustment
• Issue framing and risk
• Availability of information

• The winners curse
• Overconfidence
• The law of small numbers
• Self-serving biases
• Endowment effect
• Ignoring others cognitions
• Reactive devaluation

21
Irrational Escalation of Commitment and Mythical
Fixed-Pie Beliefs

• Irrational escalation of commitment
• Negotiators maintain commitment to a course of
  action even when that commitment constitutes
  irrational behavior
• Mythical fixed-pie beliefs
• Negotiators assume that all negotiations (not
  just some) involve a fixed pie

22
Anchoring and Adjustment and Issue Framing and
Risk

• Anchoring and adjustment
• The effect of the standard (anchor) against which
  subsequent adjustments (gains or losses) are
  measured
• The anchor might be based on faulty or incomplete
  information, thus be misleading
• Issue framing and risk
• Frames can lead people to seek, avoid, or be
  neutral about risk in decision making and
  negotiation

23
Availability of Informationand the Winners Curse

• Availability of information
• Operates when information that is presented in
  vivid or attention-getting ways becomes easy to
  recall.
• Becomes central and critical in evaluating events
  and options
• The winners curse
• The tendency to settle quickly on an item and
  then subsequently feel discomfort about a win
  that comes too easily

24
Overconfidence and The Law of Small Numbers

• Overconfidence
• The tendency of negotiators to believe that their
  ability to be correct or accurate is greater than
  is actually true
• The law of small numbers
• The tendency of people to draw conclusions from
  small sample sizes
• The smaller sample, the greater the possibility
  that past lessons will be erroneously used to
  infer what will happen in the future

25
Confidence or Overconfidence?

• We came to Iceland to advance the cause of
  peace. . .and though we put on the table the most
  far-reaching arms control proposal in history,
  the General Secretary rejected it.
• President Ronald Reagan to reporters,
• following completion of presummit arms control
  discussions
• in Reykjavik, Iceland, on October 12, 1986.
• I proposed an urgent meeting here because we
  had something to propose. . .The Americans came
  to this meeting empty handed.
• Secretary General Mikhail Gorbachev,
• Describing the same meeting to reporters.

26
Self-Serving Biasesand Endowment Effect

• Self-serving biases
• People often explain another persons behavior by
  making attributions, either to the person or to
  the situation
• The tendency, known as fundamental attribution
  error, is to
• Overestimate the role of personal or internal
  factors
• Underestimate the role of situational or external
  factors
• Endowment effect
• The tendency to overvalue something you own or
  believe you possess

27
Ignoring Others Cognitionsand Reactive
Devaluation

• Ignoring others cognitions
• Negotiators dont bother to ask about the other
  partys perceptions and thoughts
• This leaves them to work with incomplete
  information, and thus produces faulty results
• Reactive devaluation
• The process of devaluing the other partys
  concessions simply because the other party made
  them

28
Managing Misperceptions and Cognitive Biases in
Negotiation

• The best advice that negotiators can follow is
• Be aware of the negative aspects of these biases
• Discuss them in a structured manner within the
  team and with counterparts