The negotiator's assembly line

<p>This thesis explores how a weaker negotiating party may be able to effectively manage information as a tool to leverage power imbalances in negotiations. Although these imbalances may never be completely resolved, the effective management of information will enable the weaker party to stack their advantages in their favour to increase their chances for a fairer outcome. The thesis will look at the management of information through the phases of gathering, processing and conveying information. It is proposed that these phases are managed by three specific professionals, the analytical investigator, the innovative inventor and the diplomatic salesperson. These archetypes personify certain attributes that a negotiator can evoke when extracting applicable intelligence from raw information to use in negotiation discussions. The intention is for raw information to be processed as applicable intelligence through these phases in an assembly-line fashion to produce options for mutual gain for the negotiating parties. In the process of establishing this assembly line, the thesis will also explore the interplay between competitive and collaborative negotiation strategies. With this exploration, a negotiator may be able to be integrate these strategies to negotiate on both bargaining and problem-solving platforms using the Negotiator’s Assembly Line.</p>

The negotiator's assembly line

<p>This thesis explores how a weaker negotiating party may be able to effectively manage information as a tool to leverage power imbalances in negotiations. Although these imbalances may never be completely resolved, the effective management of information will enable the weaker party to stack their advantages in their favour to increase their chances for a fairer outcome. The thesis will look at the management of information through the phases of gathering, processing and conveying information. It is proposed that these phases are managed by three specific professionals, the analytical investigator, the innovative inventor and the diplomatic salesperson. These archetypes personify certain attributes that a negotiator can evoke when extracting applicable intelligence from raw information to use in negotiation discussions. The intention is for raw information to be processed as applicable intelligence through these phases in an assembly-line fashion to produce options for mutual gain for the negotiating parties. In the process of establishing this assembly line, the thesis will also explore the interplay between competitive and collaborative negotiation strategies. With this exploration, a negotiator may be able to be integrate these strategies to negotiate on both bargaining and problem-solving platforms using the Negotiator’s Assembly Line.</p>

Border Disputes: Religious Adjudication Along the Private/Public Divide

The article uses Israel’s volatile jurisdictional dynamics of the past two decades concerning access to religious community justice, as a telling case for examining the way legal pluralism is deployed along the public–private divide. The Israeli case exhibits a complex combination of an ostensibly liberal democratic regime, a commitment to a particularistic ethno-national political project, structural entanglements of state and religion against the backdrop of an unsettled constitutional order, and an historically diffuse mode of often-illiberal normative ordering within its diverse religious communities. All this provides a rich backdrop for various strategies by communal and institutional elites seeking to consolidate power, legitimacy, and authenticity in their often mutually-reliant jurisdictional projects. The article explores several salient episodes from Israel’s religious jurisdiction dynamics, focusing for purposes of analytical clarity on the case of Jewish orthodox legality. The analysis uncovers the main strategies stakeholders resort to, and shows how agency flows in different ways, with the choices of each player affecting the possibilities of the others. The institution at the arguable top of the system—the Supreme Court—is shown to be often devoid of effective means of elucidating, let along imposing, a coherent vision for a fragmented jurisdictional field. Conceptually, the judicial forum is revealed as the locus of an ongoing, uneasy engagement among normative imaginaries in a sometimes-competitive, sometimes-collaborative negotiation over coherence, tolerance, authority, and legitimacy.

An Intelligent System to Ensure Interoperability for the Dairy Farm Business Model

Picking reliable partners, negotiating synchronously with all partners, and managing similar proposals are challenging tasks for any manager. This challenge is even harder when it concerns small and medium enterprises (SMEs) who need to deal with short budgets and evident size limitations, often leading them to avoid handling very large contracts. This size problem can only be mitigated by collaboration efforts between multiple SMEs, but then again this brings back the initially stated issues. To address these problems, this paper proposes a collaborative negotiation system that automates the outsourcing part by assisting the manager throughout a negotiation. The described system provides a comprehensive view of all negotiations, facilitates simultaneous bilateral negotiations, and provides support for ensuring interoperability among multiple partners negotiating on a task described by multiple attributes. In addition, it relies on an ontology to cope with the challenges of semantic interoperability, it automates the selection of reliable partners by using a lattice-based approach, and it manages similar proposals by allowing domain experts to define a satisfaction degree for each SME. To showcase this method, this research focused on small and medium-size dairy farms (DFs) and describes a negotiation scenario in which a few DFs are able to assess and generate proposals.

COLLABORATIVE NEGOTIATION STRATEGY: A PANACEA FOR SUSTAINABLE INDUSTRIAL PEACE IN THE EDUCATIONAL SECTOR OF NIGERIA

The persistent occurrence of industrial conflict in Nigeria educational sector particularly at tertiary level has apparently impacted negatively on the standard of education in the country. Past studies had traced the frequency of industrial actions in tertiary institutions to the type of negotiation strategy often employed by both labour leaders and management representatives. This study therefore examined the available negotiation strategies with a view to identifying the appropriate one and subsequently suggests what could be done for the two parties to voluntarily embrace the negotiation strategy considered appropriate and effective to achieve sustainable industrial peace. Using the archival method, the study observed that competing negotiation strategy was predominantly used in the tertiary institutions in Nigeria. And due to the confrontational and judgemental nature of the strategy, it could not stem the tide of incessant incidences of industrial action. Also, the study observed that the choice of competing negotiation strategy by both parties was probably due to their negative perception about each other and their behavioural orientation that is grossly defective. Based on the observation and the theoretical framework, it was suggested that training programme on some identified Behaviour Modification Skills (BMS) be organized for both parties. It is anticipated that by acquiring the skills, both parties would consciously change their negative perception to positive and their behavioural orientation would equally be enhanced. Thus, both parties would be willing to apply voluntarily the collaborative negotiation strategy considered appropriate and effective to attain sustainable industrial peace in our tertiary institutions.

COLLABORATIVE NEGOTIATION STRATEGY: A PANACEA FOR SUSTAINABLE INDUSTRIAL PEACE IN THE EDUCATIONAL SECTOR OF NIGERIA

The persistent occurrence of industrial conflict in Nigeria educational sector particularly at tertiary level has apparently impacted negatively on the standard of education in the country. Past studies had traced the frequency of industrial actions in tertiary institutions to the type of negotiation strategy often employed by both labour leaders and management representatives. This study therefore examined the available negotiation strategies with a view to identifying the appropriate one and subsequently suggests what could be done for the two parties to voluntarily embrace the negotiation strategy considered appropriate and effective to achieve sustainable industrial peace. Using the archival method, the study observed that competing negotiation strategy was predominantly used in the tertiary institutions in Nigeria. And due to the confrontational and judgemental nature of the strategy, it could not stem the tide of incessant incidences of industrial action. Also, the study observed that the choice of competing negotiation strategy by both parties was probably due to their negative perception about each other and their behavioural orientation that is grossly defective. Based on the observation and the theoretical framework, it was suggested that training programme on some identified Behaviour Modification Skills (BMS) be organized for both parties. It is anticipated that by acquiring the skills, both parties would consciously change their negative perception to positive and their behavioural orientation would equally be enhanced. Thus, both parties would be willing to apply voluntarily the collaborative negotiation strategy considered appropriate and effective to attain sustainable industrial peace in our tertiary institutions.

Aligning purchasing portfolio management with sourcing negotiation styles

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine how to align purchasing portfolio management with sourcing negotiation styles.Design/methodology/approachThe authors have adopted two-step field tests: a case study; and a follow-up experimental test with 77 sourcing professionals.FindingsThe authors note that Kraljic Portfolio Matrix (KPM) provides a valuable guide for determining sourcing negotiation styles (i.e. competitive negotiation for leverage items, collaborative negotiation for strategic items and accommodative negotiation for bottleneck items). Interestingly, effective buyers adopt right negotiation styles based on the switching costs of changing suppliers, the dependence level on specific suppliers and the availability of alternative suppliers.Originality/valueThis study shows that aligning purchasing portfolio management with sourcing negotiation styles improves the chances of effective buying outcomes. Practical implications suggest that successful buyers move beyond interpreting generic predictions of the KPM framework and rather implement specific negotiation styles to maximize the potential benefits of purchasing portfolio management.

Co-construction of Knowledge in Work-Integrated E-learning Courses in Joint Industry-University Collaboration

Blended e-learning in higher education targeting company knowledge needs, can support continuous competence development for practitioners in the manufacturing industry. However, university education is traditionally not designed for workplace knowledge needs that strengthen practitioners’ learning in everyday work, i.e. work-integrated learning. Designing for such learning efforts is even more challenging when the pedagogical strategy is to stimulate practitioners own work experiences as a valuable knowledge source in construction with other peers or teachers. The aim is to explore how engineering practitioners and research teachers mutually co-construct knowledge. In particular, three types of case-based methodologies are examined within a range of industry-targeted e-learning courses. The study is part of a longitudinal joint industry-university project. Eleven courses were analyzed through focus group sessions with 110 practitioners from 15 different companies. Results show that 1) Virtual digital cases stimulate high technology learning, but show low collaboration with peers, 2) On-line collaborative negotiation cases stimulate both web-conferencing and high interactivity, and 3) Real workplace cases do not stimulate e-learning, but motivate strong work-integrated learning and knowledge expansion.