Customer Reviews

Negotiation Analysis: The Science and Art of Collaborative Decision Making

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This is a wonderful book for serious practitioners and students of negotiation. It covers the negotiation waterfront so completely that this reader -- who is also a writer and negotiation prof -- is left wondering what more can be said on the subject. Unlike most pop negotiation books, this tome drills deep into qualitative and quantitative approaches to structuring and analyzing simple and complex negotiation situations. The quality of the writing is superb. The author's insights are profound, informed by years of experience in the field. The quantitative discussion can be a bit intimidating, especially to math-challenged readers. But even without the quantitiave material, it's well worth the price of admission.

This book has a real wow factor. I was amazed at how much ground it covers - game theory, pscyhology, decision analysis, negotiation stuff. There's a great balance of technical help with easy-to-read conversations between hypothetical negotiators making the tricky concepts easier to understand. You probably won't want to read it from cover-to-cover but every chapter has really useful insights on how to negotiate better with positive or negative counterparts.

This is a rich and complete book that touches all aspects of negotiation. The subtitle "The science and art of collaborative decision making" is might be even a better descriptor of the contents. The book has a certain scholar touch and is with 600 pages really comprehensive and more to be used as a reference than to be read in one sitting. For those that are more interested in a shorter book, "Co-opetition" might be a faster to read alternative that is quite in line with this book.

Professor Raiffa shows that negotiations and how to approach them depend mainly in how the structure of the negatiation is eg. integrative vs distributive. He proposes a very structured way to approach negotiations, being good prepared and looking for alternatives to an agreement before to have the freedom to forfeit the negotiation. Once meeting being creative working together with the other party helps to find those spots that are valued differently by the parties and offer possibility of common gains. Whether always the described Full Open Truthfull Exchange (FOTE) is possible might be doubted but it gives at least the yardstick how things could be. The author compares often diverse solutions and how the merit of each of them varies depending the criteria used, and what fairness in each case might be.

The book is divided in major themes that are gone through in detail, any of those can be read in an almost independent manner, without following the order in the book.
Part I. Fundamentals describes the basics of the books and what is the approach followed to structure negotiations. The Game Theory chapter is in itself an excellent summary on the theme and a nice introduction for those that never have been exposed earlier to the subject.
Part II. Two Party Distributive (Win-Lose) Negotiations. The type of negotiation we all think about as example is explained with plenty of details and examples, including a chapter on the particular case which are auctions.
Part III. Two Party Integrative (Win-Win) Negotiations. This is the second type of negotiation we think of. There are several exmaples of different problem types one can find, some as the repartition of goods has many practical applications for the majority of people in rela life situations and gives very practical insights.
Part IV. External Help. Describes what professional help can do for you in a negotiation, and what you ahould take into account before asking for help.
Part V. Many parties. Shows the complexity of negotiations of any type when a major number and how in that occasion agreements can be drafted.

In all chapters there are plenty of examples and information how people react in laboratory situations coming from the which gives the best approximation of real situations develop. Each chapter is closed with a summary of the core concepts which helps when one wants to review the book.

With the comprehensiveness of the book few things are missing or could have been mentioned additionally. The book has plenty of examples but I missed some exercises for the reader to prepare for the diverse points in each chapter. Two small misses that could be easily arranged are how to use decision trees to help finding alternatives and to mention some of the nice software packages that help to simulate random variables that affect decisions, eg Crystallball.

This is a serious book for serious practitioners and students of negotiations. I fully agree with the other reviewers that this is a great book with two provisos:
1) It is for the serious. While very well written, it is not light reading, and
2) It is focused on analysis. For treatment of the "soft" aspects of negotiations, you will need to read other books.

If you are looking for an introduction to negotiations, I recommend Mind and Heart of the Negotiator, The (4th Edition) by Leigh Thompson and Essentials of Negotiation by Roy J. Lewicki.

If you are looking for an introduction to game theory, I recommend Thinking Strategically: The Competitive Edge in Business, Politics, and Everyday Life by Avinash K. Dixit and Barry J. Nalebuff.