Let's Make a Deal: A Dynamic Exercise for Practicing Negotiation Skills

Abstract

Because negotiation is among the most important skills for a manager to develop, activities that can foster its development are valuable for educators. The authors present an original exercise that introduces three key concepts in negotiation: best alternative to a negotiated agreement, distributive bargaining, and integrative bargaining. They review these concepts and present the exercise and its purpose, and execution, then debrief. A unique feature of the exercise is that instructors can configure dynamic buyer–seller dyads with varying distributions of power between parties. A pre- and posttest using four questions to assess learning with Master of Business Administration students and undergraduates suggest that the exercise is an effective teaching tool.

Keywords:

• classroom exercises
• negotiation
• role play