Works
- Negotiating Rationally, 1992
- Betting on the Future: The Virtues of Contingent Contracts, Harvard Business Review, 1999
- Predictable Surprises: The Disasters You Should Have Seen Coming, and How to Prevent Them, 2004
- Negotiation Genius, 2007
In Tactics of Organizational Politics
Ideas
The mythical fixed pie. Negotiators often assume that their interests are directly opposed, so that whatever the other side gains they lose. The assumption is often false and leads them to miss trades that would leave both better off; Negotiating Rationally treats it as one of the common mistakes of negotiators.
Contingent contracts. Parties who share an interest in a deal can deadlock because they expect different futures. A contingent contract makes some terms depend on how an uncertain event turns out, so the disagreement itself becomes the basis for a deal; the authors argue such contracts can also offset negotiators' biases and share risk between the parties.
Predictable surprises. A predictable surprise is a disaster that catches leaders off guard although they had the information to foresee it. Cognitive, organizational, and political biases keep foreseeable threats off the agenda, and the authors' remedy has three steps: recognize the threat, prioritize it, and mobilize support for preventive action.
Negotiating several issues at once. Discussing multiple issues together, and making package offers, lets each side trade what it values less for what it values more, which is how value is created when priorities differ. The book also discusses the post-settlement settlement, a search for a better deal after the first is signed. Caveat: The book's advice to make several package offers at the same time is described here from secondary summaries; the controlled research on multiple equivalent simultaneous offers is by other authors (the Program on Negotiation cites Leonardelli and colleagues).
What it explains
Bazerman explains why sound agreements and timely decisions are lost to predictable errors: assuming the pie is fixed, refusing to bet on disputed forecasts, and leaving foreseeable threats unaddressed. Each error suggests a move that a well-prepared party can make in the open.