Abstract
This article presents an active experiential exercise that requires participants to negotiate over scarce resources while assigned separate managerial responsibilities. Students explore concepts associated with integrative and distributive bargaining while engaging in a realistic workplace role-play. Students form pairs and assume the role of either (1) a business line manager charged with product line production and profit/loss responsibilities or (2) a corporate finance manager who is tasked with achieving overarching corporate financial goals. Both face budgetary pressures and feel great responsibility for the achievement of their individual departmental goals. Participants must negotiate with each other to attempt to come to some resolution. Teaching notes are provided. The exercise is designed for undergraduate students and can readily be used in courses such as Organizational Behavior, Negotiations, and Leadership.
This negotiation role-play exercise places students in the position of one of two department managers working within a company that makes industrial pumps. The two managers find themselves having to deal with a situation where they each perceive their counterpart to be impeding their progress toward the achievement of their respective goals. They will have to think carefully about the best way to deal with the conflict and then engage in dialogue with their counterpart. The exercise is based on an actual business situation faced by two managers in a Fortune 500 manufacturing company. It provides an opportunity to explore integrative versus distributive bargaining and the managerial frustrations related to negotiation. It allows students to practice building colleague relationships while they simulate negotiating over scarce internal resources.
The exercise can be conducted in a single 70-minute class session with undergraduates who have little preparation. The exercise benefits from the fact that it is based on a real case with a known outcome that can be revealed in the debrief following the exercise. Ideally, the exercise can be used as a way to apply theory to practice when the exercise follows a class session devoted to the teaching of the strategy and tactics associated with integrative bargaining. Alternatively, the students can be tasked with reading about the integrative bargaining concept (e.g., Lewicki et al., 2019, pp. 77-140) prior to the class session devoted to this exercise. It can readily be used in courses such as Organizational Behavior, Negotiations, and Leadership.
Theoretical Foundation
Walton and McKersie’s classic book, A Behavioral Theory of Labor and Management, published in 1965, boosted the field of negotiation studies and prompted interest in the development of different approaches to negotiating. In their book, Walton and McKersie (1965) describe two approaches to negotiation: distributive and integrative. Distributive negotiating, also called win–lose negotiating, takes a fixed-sum approach to the distribution of limited resources. The goal is to achieve a win for oneself; the more one party gets, the less the other party gets. Integrative negotiating, on the other hand, is sometimes referred to as win–win negotiating and assumes that resources can have a variable sum. Through the use of problem-solving techniques, solutions that satisfy both parties are identified; this process can result in giving the parties access to more of the pool of resources, thereby facilitating the realization of their individual goals.
Integrative negotiating has been seen as a way to develop relationships between interdependent parties as well as a way to develop a positive negotiating reputation. Roger Fisher and William Ury (1981) showcased their popular integrative bargaining methods in the early 1980s with their classic book titled Getting to Yes. This volume, which was largely focused on negotiation methods and procedures, was soon followed by a necessary piece that clearly focused on the human element of negotiations commonly called relationship building (Fisher & Brown, 1988). More recent research has supported the tie between integrative negotiating and relationship development. Fleming and Hawes (2017) maintain that integrative negotiating techniques provide a “strong opportunity for relationship development” (p. 520). Other academics and practitioners have advocated for the recognition of integrative bargaining situations (e.g., Kolb, 2015) and extended the methods and techniques by which one might build relationships and engage in integrative bargaining (Saorin-Iborra, 2006). Stoshikj (2014) also discusses the array of benefits associated with integrative negotiations. It is not surprising that over time, integrative negotiation techniques have been incorporated into a multitude of college texts, classes, and practitioner workshops (e.g., Lewicki et al., 2019).
Assessments of negotiation training courses that make use of engaged learning techniques such as experiential exercises, role-plays, and case studies indicate several positive outcomes. These outcomes include student beliefs that they have improved their negotiating skills and confidence, adopted more integrative bargaining styles, and used the skills in subsequent real-world situations (Taylor et al., 2008). A wide variety of active pedagogical tools have been developed to teach negotiating methods (e.g., Callanan & Perri, 2006; Chapman et al., 2017; Malinger, 1999; Robinson, 2017; Seltzer & Smither, 2007). Some of these integrative bargaining pedagogical materials that have been developed use business-to-business scenarios, or popular but simplistic non–business-oriented scenarios (e.g., Wohlberg et al., 1998). These contexts do little to expose students to the myriad internal company negotiations that they will face early in their careers over predictable organizational issues.
This exercise has been designed to engage students in a simulated intracompany negotiation around budgetary issues with a colleague from their own company. Thus, it adds a realistic scenario to the pedagogical tools available to expose students to internal company negotiations. An additional benefit to this exercise is that while the students are developing their understanding of negotiating techniques, they concurrently gain exposure to common and frustrating organizational occurrences such as departmental suboptimization and rigid control systems that can limit managerial decision making. This exercise contributes to the materials that prepare business school graduates to deal with dynamics that they must successfully face early in their managerial careers.
The authors have used the exercise approximately 25 times with undergraduate classes and have found that students readily engage on the task and become quite involved with their negotiation. Comments such as “I’m surprised at how intense our conversation/negotiation became” and “It was hard to clearly explain my case to someone with a completely different perspective” are common. Comments associated with successfully coming to an agreement imply satisfaction and a feeling of accomplishment, for example, “After we realized we both wanted to increase net revenue, and that we could do it even after a huge expense, we were able to work out the details and come up with a good plan.”
Learning Objectives
By the end of this exercise, students will be able to accomplish the following:
Demonstrate negotiation skills as they strive to achieve organizational outcomes for which they are assigned responsibility
Articulate the relationship between integrative negotiation strategies and positive colleague relationships
Apply knowledge of integrative bargaining to the assessment of a simulated workplace scenario
Exercise Overview
Students are assigned one of two roles and provided a scenario for their role: Oil Seals Department Manager (Appendix A) or Finance Manager (Appendix B; Appendixes A and B are also available online as supplemental materials). Time is provided for individual preparation, and then students meet in pairs to negotiate a solution to the scenario. This exercise can be adapted for any class size. If there are an odd number of students, one group of three can be formed where two individuals act as comanagers of either of the departments. The debriefing is conducted with the total class. See Table 1 for the suggested amount of time associated with each step of the exercise for a 70-minute class.
Suggested Timing.
Debriefing Overview
A debriefing of the exercise is critical to student learning. The debrief portion of the teaching notes (Appendix C) includes information as to the type of solutions the negotiating pairs will likely reach as well as questions that the instructor should ask to stimulate conversation. A description of what happened in the real-world situation that prompted the creation of this exercise is also included. Following is an outline of the debriefing.
Reconvene the class as a whole.
Ask for three pairs of volunteers to share their negotiating outcome. In each case discuss how the pair’s discussion led them to such an outcome. Explore the process they used and the nature of their discussion. Begin by asking for a pair that achieved a negotiating outcome that satisfied both parties. Then ask for a pair who achieved a different type of outcome than the first. Finally, ask for a pair who achieved an outcome different than the first two.
Point out observed uses of effective interpersonal processes such as active listening, referring back to common goals often, and focusing on the issue (as opposed to the person with whom one is negotiating).
Discuss the logical perceived benefits associated with a win–win outcome in this case (e.g., enhanced productivity, relationship development, etc.).
Ask the class about the root cause of the conflict. Point out that the managers had similar high-level goals but were pursuing the goals by different means.
Close the session by describing the real-world situation on which this exercise was based, as well as the outcomes associated with the situation’s resolution.
Conclusion
This exercise allows students to practice the use of negotiation techniques while engaging with a realistic business scenario. The exercise allows the instructor to highlight techniques that are conducive to integrative negotiation when students share the means by which they arrived at their negotiating outcomes. It is a powerful teaching tool that can be effectively deployed in one class session to bring the theory associated with integrative negotiation to practice.
Supplemental Material
LeeBrook_Finance_Manager_Role – Supplemental material for Negotiating Quality and Productivity: An Experiential Exercise
Supplemental material, LeeBrook_Finance_Manager_Role for Negotiating Quality and Productivity: An Experiential Exercise by Robert R. Albright and Dale Finn in Management Teaching Review
Supplemental Material
LeeBrook_Oil_Seals_Mgr_Role – Supplemental material for Negotiating Quality and Productivity: An Experiential Exercise
Supplemental material, LeeBrook_Oil_Seals_Mgr_Role for Negotiating Quality and Productivity: An Experiential Exercise by Robert R. Albright and Dale Finn in Management Teaching Review
Footnotes
Appendix A
Appendix B
Appendix C
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank members of the Eastern Academy of Management Experiential Learning Association for their contributions and their comments on an early version of this article/exercise.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
References
Supplementary Material
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