United States–China Plane Collision Negotiation

On April 1, 2000 an American surveillance plane and a Chinese fighter plane collided off the coast of China. The Chinese pilot parachuted out of his aircraft but was presumed dead; his body was not found. The U.S. plane made an emergency landing at a Chinese military airfield without receiving permission. China thus had possession of the U.S. plane and crew. China said that the U.S. was responsible for the crash and demanded an apology. The U.S. expressed regret over the collision but declared it had no apology to give as the fault lay with the Chinese pilot. On April 10 with negotiation between the two countries remaining deadlocked, the author considered the problem in the Evolutionary Systems Design (ESD) framework. The article discusses the author's analysis and solution, his efforts to implement it, and the agreed solution announced by the U.S. and China on April 11.     

‘Joined-Up’ Policy-Making: Group Decision and Negotiation Practice

Creating public value is problematic in a world of austerity. Joint private and public, and public-public, projects are now an established way of creating public value. Establishing joint goals within a context of different ‘own goals’ is important and difficult. A particular issue facing many organisations in seeking to negotiate joint goals in a collaborative project is that of getting all the key managers from both organisations together over enough of a sequence of meetings for agreements to be meaningful and owned by those who will deliver the project. The development of such goals can be significantly enhanced by (1) using a Group Decision Support System (GDSS) and (2) using a powerful conceptualisation of a goals framework comprising: a goals system; ‘core goals’; ‘meta-goals’; ‘negative’ goals; and ‘above and beyond’ goals. In the case of negotiating joint goals the use of a GDSS has increased productivity to such an extent that powerful negotiated agreements can be achieved with all key managers in the room in as little as one meeting. The combination of high productivity, anonymity, and the structuring of the data has also facilitated the uncovering of ‘negative goals’, and the development of ‘meta-goals’ and ‘above and beyond’ goals. This paper uses three real cases to illustrate the significance of a Group Support System’s contribution and to illustrate the different types of goals. In doing so the paper suggests that facilitating such outcomes requires a carefully designed strategic conversation necessarily supported by a GDSS to enable group decision and negotiation in practice. Two of the cases are from public-public collaboration in the health field, and the other from a private-public setting.     

WTO Agriculmral Negotiation：Hard To Break Deadlock,Questions Still Remain

During a long period, agricultural product trade as a special categoory kept deviated from the restrictions of GATT‘s rules. However. the overflow of various agricultural subsides and export subsides severely affect fair competition in international agricuhural products trade, and therefore further reform becomes an urgent need. Due to this, agricultural negotiation is listed as the core issue of the new round of WTO negotiation.     

WTO Agricultural Negotiation:Hard To Break Deadlock,Questions Still Remain

During a long period, agriculturalproduct trade as a special categorykept deviated from the restrictionsof GATT's rules. However, the overflow ofvarious agricultural subsides and exportsubsides severely affect fair competition ininternational agricultural products trade, andtherefore further reform becomes an urgentneed. Due to this, agricultural negotiationis listed as the core issue of the new roundof WTO negotiation. But agricultural negotiations go on ratherdifficultly. March 2003 wi…     

Dimensions of International Negotiation: A Test of Iklé's Typology

Results from statistical analyses of 30 cases of international negotiations supported Iklé's typology of negotiating objectives. The cases, sampled from the collection of Pew Case Studies in International Affairs, were distinguished in terms of five objectives: innovation, redistribution, extension, normalization, and side effects. In addition, a sixth objective was identified: negotiations concerning the creation of multilateral regimes. These cases focused on issues that surfaced on the international agenda during the 1980s. Each type had a relatively distinct profile based on such aspects of negotiation as the number of parties and issues, bargaining strategies, media exposure, stability of the process, and types of outcomes. The methodology contributes to the state-of-the art in comparative analysis and the results have implications for the development of middle-range theories of negotiation. They also contribute to practice, by enabling negotiators to evaluate future cases in terms of knowledge about past cases.     

To Match or Not to Match? Reactions to Turning Points in Negotiation

This study examines the impacts of process frames and salience of a turning point on negotiators’ responses to a departure during the negotiation process. Results show that individuals negotiating within an integrative-cooperative (as opposed to a distributive-competitive frame) are more likely to interpret the departure as a turning point and match the other’s offer. Similarly, results show that making the departure salient by clearly articulating the intent, content, and function of the turning point offer increases negotiators’ propensity to embrace the mutually beneficial turning point offer. The findings are discussed in light of negotiators’ awareness of events during the negotiation process, their (mis)matching of favorable offers, and relational order theory.     

China＇s New RMB Move： A Political Step in the Game of Negotiation？

This summer, China announced it would introduce more flexibility into its exchange rate, and at the same time make it remain ＂basically stable＂. This move has drawn great attention from both home and abroad since China＇s currency reform has always been a hot topic for economists, politicians, export businessmen, media and of course the public; these forces have combined to make it seem like a big issue that everyone should take a serious look at and know some facts about.     

Effects of Earnings Forecasts and Heightened Professional Skepticism on the Outcomes of Client–Auditor Negotiation

Dismissal is a major issue for distributive justice at work, because it normally has a drastic impact on an employee’s livelihood, self-esteem and future career. This article examines distributive justice under the US’s employment-at-will (EAW) system and New Zealand’s just-cause dismissal system, focusing on the three main categories of dismissal, namely misconduct, poor performance and redundancy. Under EAW, employees have limited protection from dismissal and remedies are restricted to just a few so-called exceptions. Comparatively, New Zealand’s just-cause system delivers much more just outcomes, both in terms of remedies and punishments. Despite a few shortcomings, it should be considered as a reasonable reference for policy changes in the US.     

The Relationship of Cognitive Effort,Information Acquisition Preferences and Risk to Simulated Auditor–Client Negotiation Outcomes

The auditor–client relationship is a legally-mandated relationship in which one party, the auditor, is hired and paid by the auditee (client) to inform third party stakeholders as to whether the client firm’s financial statements are presented in conformity with national financial accounting standards. When these statements do not meet the criteria for acceptable financial statements, a negotiation situation may arise in which the auditor is presumed to act in the best interests of shareholders and creditors who have no independent knowledge of the auditor’s findings. The client management may then feel forced to defend its numbers. The result is a negotiation between the auditor and client (e.g., Salterio in Account Financ 52:233–286, 2012; Brown and Wright in Account Horiz 22(1):91–109, 2008). This study examines cognitive factors and risk preference factors that may impact the negotiation both in the setting of each side’s negotiation position and on the outcomes of that negotiation using simulated auditor–client negotiations. Questionnaire and simulated auditor–client negotiations were used to generate the data, with MBA and MS in Accounting students playing the role of client CEOs and auditor partners. We further explore the use of a tool, Structural Equation Modeling, to test the data, in the process highlighting its usefulness in auditor–client negotiation research. We find that the cognitive characteristic of need for cognition is significantly and positively related to achievement of the negotiator’s desired income objectives and reported willingness to argue strongly for his/her position. Actively open-minded thinking, a second cognitive variable studied, was not significantly related to success in the negotiations, nor to a reported willingness to argue strongly for his/her position. Finally, we find that perceived aggressive tactics by the other party to the negotiation had a negative impact on the counterpart negotiator’s success in the negotiation, and satisfaction with it. As expected, risk assessment-related variables were not related to outcomes of interest.     

Humanitarian Negotiation to Protect: John Rabe and the Nanking International Safety Zone (1937–1938)

In the late months of 1937 and in the beginning of 1938, John Rabe, German CEO of Siemens China, engages in humanitarian negotiation with many actors, as the Japanese troops approach and then occupy Nanking, the capital city of Nationalist China. His responsibility as a leader and negotiator is guided by one purpose—the protection of the Chinese poorest of the poor. It motivates him in all his negotiation moves, whether he leverages principles, values, needs, interests, relationship and culture to persuade his interlocutors. The ten humanitarian negotiation situations that he faces suggest a three-step process: a planning stage to create a safety zone, an implementation stage to operationalize it and, finally, an exit stage to properly end the mission. Rabe’s ongoing questioning and doggedness, as well as that of the other twenty-one members of the International Safety Zone Committee, made a difference to protect 250,000 Chinese men, women and children. At the time, his heroism owed him the honored name of a living Buddha, and, sixty years later, of “The Schindler of China.” He was a pioneer of the responsibility to protect, and of corporate social responsibility.     

Maybe It’s Right,Maybe It’s Wrong: Structural and Social Determinants of Deception in Negotiation

Context shapes negotiators’ actions, including their willingness to act unethically. Focusing on negotiators use of deception, we used a simulated two-party negotiation to test how three contextual variables—regulatory focus, power, and trustworthiness—interacted to shift negotiators’ ethical thresholds. We demonstrated that these three variables interact to either inhibit or activate deception, providing support for an interactionist model of ethical decision-making. Three patterns emerged from our analyses. First, low power inhibited and high power activated deception. Second, promotion-focused negotiators favored sins of omission, whereas prevention-focused negotiators favored sins of commission. Third, low cognition-based trust influenced deception when negotiators experience fit between power and regulatory focus, whereas affect-based trust influenced deception when negotiators experience misfit between these structural context variables. We conclude that regulatory focus primes different moral templates: promotion-focused negotiators’ decision to deceive is determined by moral pragmatism, whereas prevention-focused negotiators’ decision to deceive is determined by opportunism. Because each combination of power and regulatory focus was tied to a specific subcomponent of trust, we further conclude that negotiators engage in motivated information search to determine whether they should deceive their opponents.