Читайте также:
|
Understanding Negotiation: The Academic Contribution
Richard Cottam
Distributed by the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, School of Foreign Service,. Georgetown University, Wr hington, D.C 20057 (2 1)687-8971
Copyright ©1986 by The Pew Charitable Trusts. ISBN: 1-56927-413-4
Case #413
UNDERSTANDING NEGOTIATION: THE ACADEMIC CONTRIBUTION
Richard Cottam
COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL Do not Duplicate – This is Copyrighted Material for Classroom Use – Available Only through the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy.(202 687-8971)
Negotiation evokes increasingly serious attention among today’s students of international relations, foreign policy, and diplomacy. The case for such attention, however, is far from self-evident. Many, perhaps most, interstate negotiations concern routine matters in which the various parties have no difficulty coming to agreement. Many others deal with fairly trivial problems, usually easily solved.
Even when the subject of the negotiations is of critical importance and involves, for example, arms reduction or the resolution of a long-festering regional conflict that threatens to complicate other more serious disputes, the negotiations are likely to occur only after diplomacy has already created a receptive environment. This generally occurs when the various parties are clearly predisposed to accept a formula for a settlement, the general out-lines of which will be well understood by all. When this is the case, the actual negotiations can be turned over to technicians or trusted third parties.
Turning to negotiations prematurely, that is, before the favorable environment has been created, may well lead to serious damage. There are, for example, a large number of competing formulae for the settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict, but the environment has not been receptive to any of them. Moving to the negotiation stage before agreement on a formula has crystallized may well exacerbate rather than ease the conflict.
Nevertheless, the case for an analytic focus on negotiations is easily made. In a major conflict, negotiations are comparable to the eye of an hour-
glass. They provide a concrete vantage point for viewing the environment within which a settlement will become possible and for gaming understanding about the way such environmental receptivity was achieved. How were attitudes and perceptions altered? What varieties of leverage were applied in the bargaining process? What objectives of the various parties to the conflict were altered and in what directions? Is the altered environment likely to lead to progress in the settlement of other disputes? In other words, it is the context of the negotiations that is of primary interest, and focusing on negotiations should reveal much about the context. The process of negotiations and the techniques used by the negotiators, it follows, will be of far less significance. The fact is, however, that much of the literature concerned with negotiation deals precisely with the process and techniques of negotiation.
The world of the diplomatic negotiator is one of great, even excessive, complexity and richness. Those individuals directly involved in negotiations are likely to include many who are exceptionally clever, subtle-minded, and well trained. Each will bring to bear an individual style and a personal manipulation strategy. Some will appear brusque, tough, and intimidating. Others will be ingratiating, warm, and understanding. The stance adopted is likely to reflect temperamental preference, cultural background, past experience, and an assessment of the demands of the situation. Yet, every negotiator is playing a role, and each must have a
Richard Cottam
reasonably good awareness of the governmental constraints under which he or she must operate and, hence, of the decisional latitude allowed. Among the various negotiators, the decisional latitude granted by respective governments may vary widely, and each will understand the limitations within which the other participants must operate.
This will be the immediate operating milieu within which the negotiators will endeavor to achieve their objectives at as near an optimal level as possible. They will measure success in terms of personal achievement, that is, the advancement of career or other more personal goals, as well as in terms of the goals specified by their government. The government’s goals are likely to be imprecise, and post hoc evaluations can, to a considerable degree, be self-serving rationalizations of the results. They can for example, be described, as the best results achievable given the negotiating environment. Because documentary evidence of the details of the negotiations will often be classified for a generation, the academic evaluator will often be left with little more than public statements by those involved and the published outcome of the proceedings.
The limitations thus placed on the academic analyst are profound. A model that could serve to bring analytic order to descriptions of the negotiating milieu would have to be so elaborate as to be unmanageable. Furthermore, the data necessary to describe the actual negotiating process and to identify such important matters as negotiating intent and bargaining strategies followed are likely to be inadequate. Therefore, it is questionable whether the academic interested in negotiations can contribute much to an understanding of the process of negotiation.
Дата добавления: 2015-09-11; просмотров: 81 | Поможем написать вашу работу | Нарушение авторских прав |