Molly Klapper's book Definitive Creative Impasse-Breaking Techniques in Mediation features an insightful and practical contribution by Dwight Golann about "insulting" opening offers or demands. He suggests why they are made, how they can be conveyed by a mediator, and how they can be converted to useful negotiations. ...
Tag Archives: Negotiation
The second post on Molly Klapper's book, Definitive Creative Impasse-Breaking Techniques in Mediation, focuses on a deceptively simple and profoundly wise short essay by Laura Kaster, Addressing Impasse by Helping the Parties Value the Case. She opens her piece with a "much overlooked but obvious" point: "Settling or mediating a...
It is curious that, as formal training in private negotiation increases, the quality of public negotiation has fallen into such disrepair. Business people negotiating a private deal are trained to listen attentively, in order to discover their counterparty's interests, and to devise beneficial options that accomodate them. Yet listening is something one seldom...
At the recent meeting of the ABA Dispute Resolution Section in Denver, Dai Kato of the University of Colorado and Jay Folberg of the JAMS Foundation offered stimulating -- even inspirational -- examples of modern-day practices of dispute resolution in Japan and Bali. These insights test our assumptions of how...
A recent post noted that Wang Cheng Jie, Secretary General of the Mediation Centers of the China Center for Promotion of International Trade, delivered an insightful and provocative presentation at the World Mediation Forum in Athens on March 12. Mr. Wang has kindly given permission for his remarks to appear on...
Readers may remember a post concerning game theory and negotiation strategy that appeared in April 2010. It has proven one of the most frequently visited posts in the past year. A featured speaker on the panel reported in that post has contacted me to advise that many of his ideas have...
This post comes from the island of Luzon, in the Philippines, where a team from the Corporate Social Responsibility Project of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government has worked on a film documenting the tensions between operators of two hydroelectric dams and the communities that were inundated, destroyed and displaced during the...


