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Negotiation

Negotiation comes from the Latin neg (no) and otsia (leisure) referring to businessmen who, unlike the patricians, had no leisure time in their industriousness; it held the meaning of business (le négoce in French) until the 17th century when it took on the diplomatic connotation as a dialogue between two or more people or parties intended to reach a beneficial outcome over one or more issues where a conflict exists with respect to at least one of these issues. Thus, negotiation is a process of combining divergent positions into a joint agreement under a decision rule of unanimity. It is aimed to resolve points of difference, to gain advantage for an individual or collective, or to craft outcomes to satisfy various interests. It is often conducted by putting forward a position and making concessions to achieve an agreement. The degree to which the negotiating parties trust each other to implement the negotiated solution is a major factor in determining whether negotiations are successful. People negotiate daily, often without considering it a negotiation. Negotiation occurs in organizations, including businesses, non-profits, and within and between governments as well as in sales and legal proceedings, and in personal situations such as marriage, divorce, parenting, etc. Professional negotiators are often specialized, such as union negotiators, leverage buyout negotiators, peace negotiator, or hostage negotiators. They may also work under other titles, such as diplomats, legislators, or brokers. Negotiation can take a wide variety of forms, from a multilateral conference of all United Nations members to establish a new international norm (such as the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea) to a meeting of parties to a conflict to end violence or resolve the underlying issue (such as constitutional negotiations in South Africa in 1990-1994 or in Colombia with the FARC on 2012-2015) to a business encounter to make a deal to a face-off between parents (or between parent and child) over the child's proper behavior. Mediation is a form of negotiation with a third-party catalyst who helps the conflicting parties negotiate when they cannot do so by themselves Negotiation can be contrasted with arbitration, where the decision lies with the third party, which the conflicting parties are committed to accept. Negotiation theorists generally distinguish between two types of negotiation The difference in the usage of the two type depends on the mindset of the negotiator but also on the situation: one-off encounters where lasting relationships do not obtain are more likely to produce distributive negotiations whereas lasting relationships are more likely to require integrative negotiating Different theorists use different labels for the two general types and distinguish them in different ways. Distributive negotiation is also sometimes called positional or hard-bargaining negotiation and attempts to distribute a 'fixed pie' of benefits. Distributive negotiation operates under zero-sum conditions and implies that any gain one party makes is at the expense of the other and vice versa. For this reason, distributive negotiation is also sometimes called win-lose because of the assumption that one person's gain is another person's loss. Distributive negotiation examples include haggling prices on an open market, including the negotiation of the price of a car or a home.

[ "Social science", "Law", "Buyer agent", "Conference of the parties", "Multilateral Agreement on Investment", "multi issue negotiation", "Term sheet" ]
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