Chapter 1 Don't Bargain Over Positions

Whether a negotiation concerns a contract, a family quarrel, or a peace settlement among nations, people routinely engage in positional bargaining. Each side takes a position, argues for it, and makes concessions to reach a compromise. The classic example of this negotiating minuet is the haggling that takes place between a customer and the proprietor of a second-hand store:

And so it goes, on and on. Perhaps they will reach agreement; perhaps not.

Any method of negotiation may be fairly judged by three criteria: It should produce a wise agreement if agreement is possible. It should be efficient. And it should improve or at least not damage the relationship between the parties. (A wise agreement can be defined as one that meets the legitimate interests of each side to the extent possible, resolves conflicting interests fairly, is durable, and takes community interests into account.)

The most common form of negotiation, illustrated by the above example, depends upon successively taking—and then giving up—a sequence of positions.

Taking positions, as the customer and storekeeper do, serves some useful purposes in a negotiation. It tells the other side what you want; it provides an anchor in an uncertain and pressured situation; and it can eventually produce the terms of an acceptable agreement. But those purposes can be served in other ways. And positional bargaining fails to meet the basic criteria of producing a wise agreement, efficiently and amicably.

Arguing over positions produces unwise outcomes

When negotiators bargain over positions, they tend to lock themselves into those positions. The more you clarify your position and defend it against attack, the more committed you become to it. The more you try to convince the other side of the impossibility of changing your opening position, the more difficult it becomes to do so. Your ego becomes identified with your position. You now have a new interest in “saving face”—in reconciling future action with past positions—making it less and less likely that any agreement will wisely reconcile the parties' original interests.

The danger that positional bargaining will impede a negotiation was well illustrated in 1961 by the breakdown of the talks under President John F. Kennedy for a comprehensive ban on nuclear testing, which, if enacted, might have headed off much of the superpower arms race that ensued over the next three decades. A critical question arose: How many on-site inspections per year should the Soviet Union and the United States be permitted to make within the other's territory to investigate suspicious seismic events? The Soviet Union finally agreed to three inspections. The United States insisted on no less than ten. And there the talks broke down—over positions—despite the fact that no one understood whether an “inspection” would involve one person looking around for one day, or a hundred people prying indiscriminately for a month. The parties had made little attempt to design an inspection procedure that would reconcile the United States' interest in verification with the desire of both countries for minimal intrusion.

Focusing on positions nearly led to unnecessary bloodshed in a dispute between farmers and the national oil company in Iraq after the fall of the Saddam Hussein regime. Displaced farmers in the south of Iraq had banded together, leased arable land from the government, and used their last savings and borrowings to plant crops. Unfortunately, only a few months later the farmers received a letter calling for them to vacate the land immediately in accord with the fine print of their lease, because oil had been discovered under it. The oil company said, “Get off our land.” The farmers replied, “It's our land, and we're not leaving.” The oil company threatened to call the police. The farmers said, “There are more of us,” so the national oil company threatened to bring in the army. “We have guns too; we aren't leaving,” came the reply. “We have nothing left to lose.”

As troops gathered, bloodshed was averted only by the last-minute intervention of an official fresh from a training program in alternatives to positional bargaining. “How long will it be before you expect to produce oil on this land?” he asked the national oil company. “Probably three years,” they replied. “What do you plan to do on the land over the next few months?” “Mapping; a little seismic surveying of the underground layers.” Then he asked the farmers, “What's the problem with leaving now, as they've asked?” “The harvest is in six weeks. It represents everything we own.”