Originally from Alternatives to the High Cost of Litigation

PAGE PREVIEW

Last month in these pages we introduced some examples from our new book, the culmination of 15 years’ work in the Canon of Negotiation Initiative which we run, and whose overall arc of discovery we discussed in the first issue in this three-part series. “A Canon Is Revised: Has the Negotiation Field Come of Age?” 36 Alternatives 147 (November 2018)(available at https://bit.ly/2zG6X1K).

In last month’s article we included some excerpts of chapters that we think address the perennial problem of how one human being relates to (and gets something accomplished with) another, in new and useful ways. See “One to One: Moving Forward While Facing Deep Differences,” 36 Alternatives 161 (December 2018)(available at https://bit.ly/2SKciwr).

But businesses and other organizations don’t run just on individual negotiations. Negotiations between individuals and groups, and those which are entirely between groups— sometimes multiple groups at a time—are everyday necessities of organizational life. The failure of these negotiations is sometimes the cause of an organization’s failure as a whole. So this month we will follow up with a few excerpts of what our contributors have been teaching us about groups, firms and other organizational settings.