This issue of Negotiation Journal is big. We are not speaking of its height and width. Nothing has changed there. And yes, this particular issue is thicker than most, although it is not quite a record setter. We are speaking instead of its temporal span, as this is the fourth issue of our silver anniversary year.
To mark our centennial issue, some old friends and colleagues have contributed their reflections on how the theory, practice, and teaching of negotiation have grown and evolved since our founding. Larry Susskind, whose article considers the future of public dispute resolution, has the distinction of having written for the first issue of the journal and now the one hundredth, as well as many in between. You'll see also the work of others who were present at or near our creation through their involvement with the multidisciplinary, multi‐institutional Program on Negotiation (PON) at Harvard Law School, which launched the enterprise and has been a sponsor ever since. They include Joel Cutcher‐Gershenfeld, Debbie Kolb (who served as coeditor not that long ago), Bob McKersie, Bruce Patton, Frank Sander, and Jim Sebenius. Max Bazerman, who contributes a piece with coauthor Chia‐Jung Tsay, also wrote for the journal before joining the PON family some years ago. And, although not there during Negotiation Journal's birthing, Eileen Babbitt has also been involved with PON for some time.
All of the foregoing is to admit the obvious: this particular issue has a strong PON tilt. We think that is appropriate given the fact that PON is Negotiation Journal's home. This special anniversary issue also includes the contributions of two additional negotiation scholars, who, although they live some distance from Boston, have been much‐valued members of PON's extended family: Negotiation Journal associate editors Dan Druckman and Carrie Menkel‐Meadow.
In this issue, we also include a book review by Richard Hackman of Harvard's psychology department. Richard is new to these pages, although his insights have long influenced the work of many of us. Thankfully, contributor John Winslade spares us from being utterly parochial! We would have been delighted to publish his article, “The Secret Knowledge of Peacemaking,” even if he were next door, but he actually lives three time zones away. In the same spirit, we tip our hat to Irena Nutenko not only for coauthoring “The Next Generation: Creating New Peace Processes in the Middle East” but also for living in Haifa, Israel — even farther from Harvard Square.
Those of you who are careful readers may have noticed the use of the first person plural here, which is a departure from standard practice. It is not some sort of royal we, a grammatical white tie and tails for our silver anniversary. And if you are especially keen‐eyed, you might have caught the placement of the apostrophe in the title for this Editors' Note as this one is jointly authored by the current faculty editor, Mike Wheeler; current managing editor, Nancy Waters; and Negotiation Journal's founding managing editor, Bill Breslin.
Early this past summer, Mike and Bill met for lunch in a seaside restaurant in Bill's hometown of Rockport, Massachusetts, where we refreshed one another's memories about the journal's genesis and traded stories about its contributors over the years. An intern had carefully analyzed all the prior tables of contents, but Bill did not have to see the spreadsheet to know that the most frequent non‐PON writer has been Northwestern University's Steve Goldberg, who continues to illuminate real‐world mediation practice. (His most recent article appeared in July.)
We also spoke at length about our much‐missed friend, Jeffrey Z. Rubin, whose commitments to multidisciplinary research and to bridging theory and practice continue to be reflected in our pages. It was Jeff who assembled an editorial board of accomplished negotiation scholars and practitioners from around the world who have contributed their time and talents over the years by providing guidance, reviewing articles, and submitting articles of their own. Some continue to serve on our board today. We are deeply grateful to all of our board members, past and present.
Despite this talented roster and the prestige of the consortium of universities that sponsor PON, Jeff had to hustle to sell the idea of a new journal focused on negotiation. Our own colleagues were on board, but some academic publishers were skeptical of the notion that the field was a legitimate area of inquiry.
Thanks to Jeff's persistence — and his own negotiation skills — we finally found a home in 1984, just a few days before Jeff was scheduled to leave to spend a year at Tel Aviv University as a Guggenheim Fellow. Bill, moreover, had been hired as managing editor just two weeks earlier. The Internet had not yet slipped out of its chrysalis, so the two of them kept in contact via one weekly telephone call, the U.S. Post Office, Telex messages, and tape recordings about work‐in‐progress. Somehow it all worked.
At roughly the same time, the PON — and with it Negotiation Journal— got a boost from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, which made a major commitment to university‐based centers focused on negotiation. PON was the first of these centers, but others soon followed at the University of Colorado, Stanford, Northwestern, the University of Michigan, and the University of Minnesota, to name just a few. Faculty and graduate students at these new centers sought to publish their research findings and other work in our pages.
Also around the same time, such organizations as the Society of Professionals in Dispute Resolution, the Academy of Family Mediators, and the National Conference on Peacemaking and Conflict Resolution (now all combined into the Association for Conflict Resolution), the International Association for Conflict Management, and the American Bar Association's Special Committee on Dispute Resolution provided opportunities for people in the nascent fields of negotiation and mediation to meet and exchange ideas. Sometimes, topics discussed at these gatherings evolved into individual articles or entire special issues in Negotiation Journal.
Jeff Rubin himself was another key source of “article generation.” A peripatetic scholar, Jeff was invited to teach at locations all over the globe and always encouraged any new negotiation colleague he would meet to submit some of his or her work to the journal. Publishing technology was far different then. Articles were submitted in hard copy (with two copies for reviewers to read). If a work was accepted, editing also took place on the hard copy and then changes were negotiated with the author; after the accepted changes were made, a hard copy of the finished manuscript and a floppy disk were sent out to be typeset. Photocopies of the galleys were then read by both author and managing editor.
Technology has both simplified and sped up that process. Articles are now submitted and reviewed via a website, and the editing process involves many e‐mails and electronic markup. And, because submitting articles is easier than ever before, the number of submissions, from all over the world, continues to increase.
Over the years, we have often heard from our readers — be they subscribers, occasional casual readers, or students who have found us a fertile source for citation in their papers. We appreciate this feedback, whether in the form of bouquets or brickbats, as it advances our understanding of negotiation. We have endeavored to present serious research in a reader‐friendly style. Likewise, we believe the scholarly community has been enriched by the experiences and comments of practitioners, whose work has also been featured in these pages.
Thanks to Jeff's original vision, Negotiation Journal has always provided a forum where theory and practice inform each other. We lost Jeff prematurely in 1995, and it was a painful, difficult adjustment for all of us. As time has gone by, however, we think also of how lucky we were to have had him in our lives — we miss his quick wit, kindness, incredible work ethic, and his friendship. It has been a privilege to carry out the work he began.
This current issue certainly reflects his eclectic interests. Its articles explore variously trends and methods in negotiation theory and research, negotiation analysis, negotiation decision making, and negotiation pedagogy. Additional topics include labor negotiation, gender and negotiation, developments in alternative dispute resolution, international peacemaking, and public dispute resolution. Such work expands and deepens our understanding of negotiation and kindred processes. Together with other negotiation organizations dedicated to the wise resolution of disputes and the forging of value‐creating transactions, we will continue to disseminate frameworks and techniques to foster the well‐being of individuals, communities, and society at‐large. We know that with growing knowledge, whole new sets of ideas and practice await our exploration. We are delighted to have been part of this enterprise, and we look forward to participating in the Journal's good work in the years ahead.
