Introduction
Last year, I conducted a survey among teachers of negotiation to discover what they taught about the subject and how they taught it. During the process, I noted that a number of my respondents did not have any title on their course syllabi that was designated as a “course book” or “textbook.” This surprised me, especially because there appears to be a healthy market for this type of book.
Why was I surprised? Pedagogical bias on my part probably. I have been a textbook fan ever since I launched a graduate course in negotiation more than twenty years ago. I like the idea of having a textbook and feel that it helps produce the best learning outcomes. It gives coherence and a backbone to the course structure and also spares the instructor from compiling what a previous reviewer has aptly termed “a cumbersome assemblage of readings” (Paese 1998). In any case, assigning a textbook does not preclude adding supplementary materials gleaned elsewhere. Using one also ensures that the author or authors receive their royalty entitlement, whereas “collections of readings” often exist in an ethically gray area with regard to such payments.
Notwithstanding some of my survey findings, it seems obvious that textbooks are widely used to teach the subject of negotiation and that there is a continuing market for them. The publication of at least three new textbooks in three years attests to this. Furthermore, two of the three have had continuing success: five editions of Essentials of Negotiation have been produced between 1997 and 2010, and there have been four editions of The Mind and Heart of the Negotiator between 1998 and 2009. The blurb on the back cover of the latter book further supports claims that negotiation textbooks remain popular by proclaiming that the book is “an established title widely used by colleges and universities throughout the world.”
Now competing with these two top‐selling contenders for textbook sales is a new book. Entitled Negotiating Essentials, it is out of the same Pearson Prentice Hall publishing stable as The Mind and Heart of the Negotiator, which seems strange as both titles appear to be courting the same market and were published around the same time.
In this essay, I will consider each book individually and also examine their similarities and differences. Because Essentials of Negotiation and Negotiating Essentials appear most similar — not least in their titles — I shall begin with these.
Essentials of Negotiation
Essentials of Negotiation, now in its fifth edition (2010), was written by Roy J. Lewicki, David M. Saunders, and Bruce Barry. The first edition was published in 1997 to serve “many faculty who wanted a briefer version of Negotiation (p. vii) first published in 1985. Joseph Litterer and John Minton were coauthors of earlier editions of the book. Since its first edition, Essentials of Negotiation has more or less been published in tandem with the longer text, which is now in its sixth edition of 639 pages and priced at $127.50.
In many ways, little has changed between the first and fifth editions of Essentials of Negotiation. There were twelve chapters and 273 pages in the first edition. And there are twelve chapters and 288 pages in the fifth edition. The layout of both books is similar and includes the frequent and effective use of bullet points, bold typeface, cartoons, figures, and tables. The book also offers convenient chapter summaries.
Even the Carter family has changed very little. Their story is spread over several pages at the beginning of the first and every subsequent edition of Essentials of Negotiation. It is told to highlight the variety of situations that can be handled by negotiation in a single day.
Like television's cartoon Simpson family, almost nothing changes for Joe and Sue Carter over the years. Their day still starts “early, as usual,” they still have the same jobs, and their two children remain teenagers.Joe is about to buy the same “sporty luxury import” automobile if Sue approves, and the family still disagrees about what restaurant to eat in, although the two latest editions of the textbook now reveal that the reason for this culinary discord is that Joe and son Ted like steak houses, while Sue and Tracy prefer Chinese! Oh and yes, whereas flipping a coin to reach a restaurant decision in 1997's first edition (and in 2001 and 2004) might make “one of them feel like a loser and the other feel guilty,” by 2007 and now in 2010, the same throw of the coin, while still perhaps producing a “loser,” would no longer seem to engender guilt. Rather there is a risk that “an argument could start and in the end no one would feel really satisfied.” Welcome to the guilt‐free but potentially more aggressive Carter family!
Do We Need a Fifth Edition?
My somewhat flippant description of the Carter family story is meant to raise an important question about the similarities between the first and fairly frequent subsequent editions of Essentials of Negotiation: Is there enough new material in this latest edition to require students to buy an expensive new textbook? After all, there are much cheaper or even free copies of earlier editions available on the Web, at book exchange fairs and used bookstores, or from former students.
Having used Essentials of Negotiation as a textbook ever since its first edition, this is certainly a question I have been asked many times by my negotiation course participants. Apart from obvious financial considerations, what has prompted most students over the years to query the need to buy the latest edition is that the large majority of chapters in all five editions of the book have very similar titles. In fact, of the current edition's twelve chapters, nine carry similar or identical titles to those in the first three editions. Moreover, all twelve chapters are identical to the fourth edition published as recently as 2007.
It is the book's “Contents in Brief” page that students tend to latch onto when pointing out the content similarities among the various editions of Essentials of Negotiation. But this does not do the book full justice in terms of new material when compared with the first three editions. This is borne out by reading the subsequent and more detailed “Contents” section. It occupies more than four pages and describes the various sections and subsections of each chapter. Reading this reveals that both the fourth and fifth editions contain a good deal of additional and useful content.
Besides three new chapters — on relationships, multiple parties, and teams — and a concluding chapter describing ten “best practices” for negotiators, a closer look at these detailed “Contents” pages reveals other differences from the first three editions of the book. The fifth edition now devotes nearly four pages to “mood, emotion, and negotiation,” whereas in the third edition, there were barely two. This is welcome additional material reflecting increased interest in and research on the topic throughout our new century.
Furthermore, the chapter on “Global Negotiation” from the third edition has been expanded from twenty‐four to forty‐six pages and retitled “International and Cross‐Cultural Negotiation” in the two later editions. The opening section of this chapter also differs from that of the first three editions. Now, we have “What Makes International Negotiation Different?” For many an international reader, this will be a welcome improvement on the opening sections from earlier editions, which were headed “The American Negotiation Style” and “Not Everyone Negotiates Like Americans!”— a self‐evident truth surely, at least outside of the United States.
But when comparing this fifth edition of Essentials of Negotiation to the fourth edition published in 2007, I found few differences. The main ones are the inclusion of three or four learning objectives at the beginning of each chapter and a small amount of rewriting where new research has emerged. In addition, three funny cartoons have been added — although one even funnier one has been taken away. But apart from these few small differences, the fifth edition of Essentials of Negotiation is the same as the fourth edition.
I return here to the fundamental question I posed earlier. If Essentials of Negotiation is already a required textbook, is the new material in this latest edition enough to justify requiring students to buy a relatively expensive new edition? Bear in mind also that embracing the fifth edition could well result in possibly three editions of the book appearing in the same class because many copies of the 2004 third edition remain in circulation, not to mention the 2007 fourth edition, which, as I noted earlier, is nearly identical to the fifth. Then follows the problem of directing course participants to the relevant sections in each edition. Furthermore, the instructor will need to inform students what new material has been added and where to find it in the latest edition.
I have been an enduring fan of Essentials of Negotiation since the first edition. Students by and large have also evaluated it highly: it seemed to press the right buttons and cover all the bases necessary to fulfill the needs of the course. And there is indeed a good deal of useful new material in the fourth edition, which now can also be found in the fifth.
Nonetheless, I somewhat reluctantly dropped Essentials of Negotiation as the course textbook soon after the fourth edition appeared in 2007. It was my considered view that there was now a new textbook on the market of similar overall merit. And it did not present the logistical problems of coping with a steady stream of students brandishing previous editions.
Negotiating Essentials
Negotiating Essentials is the title of the new textbook I chose. Because it is the first edition of the title, there are as yet no problems with students turning up with earlier editions. This is the first book on negotiation by the Kentucky‐based duo of Michael R. Carrell, dean of the College of Business, Northern Kentucky University, and Christina Heavrin, J.D., special counsel to the mayor of Louisville, Kentucky. Carrell and Heavrin have previously published books on organizational behavior and labor relations, and collective bargaining.
The authors’ backgrounds (one is an academic, one a practitioner; one male, one female) are a plus for me. (Because the authors are newcomers to the negotiation textbook field, it seems that the publishers thought it advisable to emphasize their qualifications. While around twenty lines of professional biographical information are devoted to the three established and prestigious authors of Essentials of Negotiation, the two authors of Negotiating Essentials are given a lot more space. The most self‐effacing author among the three titles would appear to be Leigh Thompson, who is, in fact, a prodigious negotiation scholar. The Mind and Heart of the Negotiator offers no biographical information at all beyond the author's affiliation to the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.)
But obviously, it is not who the authors are, but what they write that determines if a title should be adopted as a textbook. So, why did I choose to introduce the Carrell and Heavrin book? The clear similarities between the new Negotiating Essentials and the tried‐and‐tested Essentials of Negotiation did indeed play a part. At 278 pages, it is only a little shorter than Essentials of Negotiation. In addition, many of the ten chapters in Negotiating Essentials cover much the same ground as the older title. So, we get a general introduction to negotiation, distributive bargaining, integrative bargaining, negotiation strategy and planning, power, emotion, ethics, and cross‐cultural negotiation. And both books make fairly extensive use of tables, boxes, and cartoons — all in all, they have a very similar “look.”
But there are also differences that favor Negotiating Essentials. For example, Carrell and Heavrin offer material not provided by Lewicki, Saunders, and Barry even though the book has two fewer chapters. Gender issues in negotiation is one such topic, with a four‐page section devoted to it. Essentials of Negotiation, however, does not touch upon the subject at all. Moreover, Negotiating Essentials has a complete chapter of twenty‐six pages devoted to the dynamic field of alternative dispute resolution, while the topic is not covered in the other book. In fairness, Lewicki, Barry, and Saunders score strongly with their succinct nine‐page final chapter entitled “Best Practices in Negotiations.” This chapter was first added in the fourth edition and neatly sums up some of the book's key learning points in the form of ten “best practices.” The final chapter in Carrell and Heavrin, “Closing the Deal,” is less satisfactory.
Other features of Negotiating Essentials are, for me, an improvement on Essentials of Negotiation. One is that Carrell and Heavrin introduce their section on negotiation preparation or planning at the beginning of the book where it seems to logically belong. Lewicki, Saunders, and Barry wait until chapter four before they discuss preparation or planning. In earlier editions, it was placed much earlier.
I also like how Negotiating Essentials sums up each chapter by asking the reader to answer questions about material covered in that chapter. Essentials of Negotiation, however, adopts the more traditional approach of condensing the essence of the chapter in a “Chapter Summary.” (The Mind and Heart of the Negotiator does pretty much the same thing.) My preference is for the Carrell and Heavrin approach, which I find activates students more and makes it easier to check that essential material in the chapter has been understood.
The way the two authors open each chapter in Negotiating Essentials is also impressive. Using bold type, they clearly signpost what they intend the student to get out of each chapter. Thus, in chapter one “An Introduction to Negotiation,” they write: “In this chapter we present five negotiation skills that can be learned and developed by the novice negotiator, and applied to the end‐of‐chapter Learning Exercise, ‘House For Rent’ ” (p. 2). They go on to list those skills (“recognize five essential elements in a negotiation,”“be able to model bargaining behaviors used by skilled negotiators,”“learn to recognize bargaining styles and how such styles impact bargaining behaviors and strategies in a negotiation,”“learn how to set collaborative goals to successfully resolve a conflict,” and “recognize and avoid cognitive biases that hinder successful negotiation”).
I find this procedure, which is repeated throughout the book, to be a pedagogical strength, which Lewicki, Saunders, and Barry have finally taken on board in the fifth edition of Essentials of Negotiations. As noted earlier, they now list “learning objectives” at the beginning of each chapter. (The Mind and Heart of the Negotiator does not have this approach.)
Cross‐Cultural Negotiation
Another interesting comparison between Essentials of Negotiation and Negotiating Essentials centers around what each book offers in the way of material about international or cross‐cultural negotiation. Each devotes about the same number of pages to the subject (twenty plus), but the Carrell and Heavrin book strikes me as having the edge in its treatment of the subject.
Negotiating Essentials examines the cross‐cultural aspects of negotiation in chapter nine. Entitled “The Influence of Culture and Gender on Negotiation,” it contains much useful material not present in the two other books.
For example, I noted with approval that Geert Hofstede's (2001) work is given comprehensive treatment in Negotiating Essentials. It is particularly gratifying to see Hofstede's fifth dimension presented and discussed in the Carrell and Heavrin title. This dimension, termed “Long‐Term Orientation,” was added subsequent to the other four dimensions from his original study. Unlike some of Hofstede's other dimensions, this one seems easy for students to grasp and, in my experience, often produces lively discussion in class. This is especially true when there is a mix of Western and Asian students, especially those from Chinese, Japanese, and Korean cultures. But this dimension is ignored in the other two books, which only include Hofstede's original four dimensions.
Even more gratifying from a European perspective is that the relatively recent and highly influential Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness (GLOBE) study (House et al. 2004) is given a good deal of space in this chapter. (The other two books do not discuss it at all.)
GLOBE is a research project that has developed empirically based theories to describe, understand, and predict the impact of cultural variables on business practices. It covers sixty‐two countries grouped into ten regional clusters and was based on surveys of more than 17,000 middle managers. Nine cultural dimensions are proposed, a number of which are based on Hofstede's dimensions. Negotiating Essentials presents the study in some detail using easy‐to‐read graphs, and then the authors relate the study to how managers might negotiate in the surveyed countries.
The book then goes on to examine negotiation issues sensitive to culture, including traps to avoid, cognitive and learned biases, tactics for success, emotions in cross‐cultural negotiations and communication, perceptions of time, and trust and fairness issues. Excellent use is also made of the pioneering yet still pertinent work of Edward T. Hall and his two classic classifications of culture: high context and low context.
My only misgiving about the chapter is the juxtaposing of “gender” and “culture” in the one chapter. Are we meant to infer that gender differences are equivalent to culture differences? In defense of the authors, it must be said that their discussion of what they term “gender issues in negotiations” occupies a little under three pages. Clearly, this length is insufficient for the topic to be allocated a chapter in its own right so they had to put it somewhere. Whether this is the right place, however, is debatable.
The Mind and Heart of the Negotiator
The third and final book I will review is the fourth edition of The Mind and Heart of the Negotiator by Leigh Thompson. It was published in 2009 by Pearson Prentice Hall, the same company that gave us Negotiating Essentials in 2008, which raises a question: If Thompson's book warrants going into a fourth edition, why has the publisher launched a new title by authors virtually unknown in the field of negotiation? I can only speculate that Pearson Prentice Hall sees The Mind and Heart of the Negotiator as its “heavyweight” in boxing parlance with its 411 pages and weightier price. However, Negotiating Essentials at 278 pages enters the ring as its “middleweight” contender, better suited in size and price to compete with the 288‐page Essentials of Negotiation.
And in a way, “heavyweight” is how I have always viewed earlier editions of the Thompson book, as it is a bit too copious for my nine‐week negotiation course. It is great as a supplementary book though, and always recommended to students when they write their term papers. New editions every few years with the problems that this brings have also constrained me from adopting The Mind and Heart of the Negotiator as a mandatory textbook.
Three Books for the Price of One
The latest edition of The Mind and Heart of the Negotiator would appear to make its special sales pitch by offering what is essentially three books for the price of one, although it is somewhat more expensive than the other two textbooks reviewed here.
The “three books for the price of one” offer is implied by dividing the title into three parts each of four chapters. Part one offers “Essentials of Negotiation” (95 pages), part two “Advanced Negotiation Skills” (121 pages), and part three “Applications and Special Scenarios” (119 pages). There are also four appendixes entitled “Are You a Rational Person? Check Yourself,”“Nonverbal Communication and Lie Detection,”“Third‐Party Intervention,” and “Negotiating a Job Offer” (forty‐five pages in all). A detailed contents section and separate name and subject indexes constitute the rest of the book.
These separate indexes are, I feel, a much preferred way of handling this section of a textbook. The other two titles go for the messier one‐index solution with names and subjects intermixed, which is more time consuming to use. Another design advantage of The Mind and Heart of the Negotiator is the location of reference notes at the bottom of each page — much easier than the setup in the other two books, which places references in an “Endnotes” section at the back of each chapter.
The Thompson book, however, does lose out to Essentials of Negotiation in one design area. The Lewicki, Saunders, and Barry title has a bibliography section at the end of the book, with all references arranged alphabetically over twenty‐one pages. The Mind and Heart of the Negotiator has no equivalent list despite the large number of publications referred to in the text. Having the reference notes at the bottom of each page is a plus, but not grouping them alphabetically at the end as well (as was done in the third edition) is a definite flaw.
Part one of The Mind and Heart of the Negotiator (preceded by a two‐page preface and a one‐page overview) delivers what the reader is entitled to expect from a section entitled “Essentials of Negotiation.” Thus, there is an introductory chapter, one on preparation and the other two on distributive and integrative negotiation, respectively. For some reason, however, Thompson eschews naming her chapter “Integrative Negotiation,” preferring that much abused term “Win‐Win Negotiation.” She adds the subtitle “Expanding the Pie” as distinct from “Slicing the Pie” for the distributive negotiation chapter, but why “win‐win?” It is such a mangled metaphor.
Part two of The Mind and Heart of the Negotiator, “Advanced Negotiation Skills,” comprises four chapters on developing a negotiating style; establishing trust and building a relationship; power, persuasion, and ethics; and creativity and problem solving. These are all extremely useful aspects of negotiation, although it could be argued that they are as much “essentials” as they are “advanced.”
Part three of the book, “Applications and Special Scenarios,” comprises four chapters on the following topics: multiple parties, coalitions, and teams; cross‐cultural negotiation; tacit negotiations and social dilemmas; and negotiating via information technology. The four appendices that complete the title have already been listed.
Strengths and Weaknesses
For me, part three of The Mind and Heart of the Negotiator contains the strongest and weakest chapters in the book. Strongest, I think, is the chapter on multiple parties, coalitions, and teams; weakest, in my view, is the chapter on cross‐cultural negotiation.
I find Thompson's treatment of multiple parties, coalitions, and teams to be clearly superior to the way the topic is covered in the other two books. She devotes more than forty pages to an extensive and insightful examination of this complex topic, which has become an increasingly important facet of negotiation. This compares to around twenty pages on the same topic in Essentials of Negotiation (which ignored the topic until the fourth edition) and a measly two pages in Negotiating Essentials. Of course Lewicki, Saunders, and Barry might argue that their aim is to keep the length of their textbook at around three‐hundred pages versus the more than four‐hundred pages of The Mind and Heart of the Negotiator and that their twenty‐page discussion of the subject is adequate enough. However, Carrell and Heavrin cannot escape criticism for giving multiple teams, coalitions, and teams such short shrift.
Less satisfactory is Thompson's chapter on cross‐cultural negotiation. Its weakness is not what it contains but rather what it omits: Thompson relies quite heavily on the work of Jeanne Brett in this chapter, while other excellent researchers in the area are given only glancing attention. I do not intend to disparage Brett's fine work on cross‐cultural negotiation, but Thompson would have benefited from casting her net wider and deeper especially outside the United States. Otherwise, the risk is that the much repeated accusation “Americans think they know best” could be leveled against this cross‐cultural negotiation chapter.
For example, in an edition published in 2009, it is surprising that hardly any attention is paid to Project GLOBE whose results were published in 2004. As already noted, Carrell and Heavrin devote more than six pages to this wide‐ranging and influential study. Thompson does not mention it at all except as a footnote reference at the bottom of page 261. Geert Hofstede is given the same sort of cold shoulder, although his graph “Position of Countries on Power Distance and Individualism” is displayed on page 273 of the book and given a passing mention. In addition, the title of his pioneering yet still pertinent work, Culture's Consequences (1980), is a footnote reference on page 261. And that is it! From my “side of the pond,” at least, that seems pretty little space devoted to our esteemed European cultural guru, especially as copies of The Mind and Heart of the Negotiator available in Europe bear the subtitle “International Edition.”
While I am in the grumpy groove, let me add that the cartoons in this book are a big disappointment. I nearly wrote “lack of cartoons” for there are only two of them, they are not especially funny, and they are reproduced in a grainy gray way as if they were an afterthought. Thompson and her editors should decide if they really want cartoons in The Mind and Heart of the Negotiator or not. If yes, they should commit to a number of good ones and get the reproductions right. As things stand, dipping the littlest toe the tiniest bit in tepid humorous water does nothing for the book. The other two titles have set quite a high standard in this respect, and the Thompson textbook should aspire to match them or withdraw from the cartoon race.
But I feel that it is appropriate to counterbalance the above with a positive, and it concerns the book's coverage of gender issues in negotiation: The Mind and Heart of the Negotiator explores gender issues and explores them well in two sections of the book. Unlike Carrell and Heavrin who place gender issues in their culture chapter, Thompson discusses gender under persuasion tactics and much later in an appendix concerned with nonverbal communication. These sections are interesting and insightful, and left me wishing for more of the same treatment of the topic in other parts of the book.
Is There a Need for a Fourth Edition?
Like the fifth edition of the Lewicki, Saunders, and Barry book, the fourth edition of the Thompson title must also be subjected to the “how much is new?” test. Is there enough new wine here to warrant putting it in a new and more expensive bottle? Why not just reprint the third edition? After all, Getting to Yes has only been published in two editions, the last in 1991, and is still in print.
Thompson seems to be aware that this question might be posed by stating on the first page of the book's preface: “I took the task of revising The Mind and Heart of the Negotiator very seriously. Every chapter has a new opening section that illustrates a real world negotiation and no fewer than ninety examples from the business world have been added since the last edition. Also, I cited the groundbreaking results of more than a hundred new scientific articles on negotiation.”
Let me look at Thompson's two revisions. Indeed, each of the twelve chapters does have a new “opening section” consisting of a boxed story relevant to the chapter followed by some discussion about it. All stories from the previous edition have been replaced. But why have all the previous stories been dumped? If they were good enough four years ago, why don't any of them pass muster this time around? Surely, some could have survived? Is there a hint of window dressing here?
Certainly, one comparison between present and previous stories does not, in my opinion, favor the “new” story. In the new edition, the story that opens the cross‐cultural negotiation chapter concerns a meeting between former American President George W. Bush and Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia subsequent to September 11, 2001. Tension between the two countries was high when it became known that fifteen of the nineteen men who hijacked the planes that day were Saudi Arabians. In the story, President Bush is cast in the unusual role of negotiation hero when he kisses the cheek of the prince and then walks hand in hand with him. This image of the two men holding hands “represented a repaired trust and a mutual respect, and the talks were dubbed a success by both sides” (p. 258).
Compare this to the discarded story from the 2005 edition. Here, we read the story of a western businessman from the Koosh Ball Company who received a three‐cent lower price offer per ball from a Chinese manufacturer than that of his present supplier who is also Chinese. Instead of immediately demanding a similar reduction from the present seller, the buyer tells us he flew to Hong Kong and arranged “a very elaborate dinner with the current manufacturer and his whole family to find out whether it was possible to get his price down.” He goes on to say that he spent all the time at the dinner stressing the good relationship that exists between him and the Chinese seller, as well as indicating that “there was an opportunity for him to make more products for us” in the future. The businessman concludes the story by saying “we never told him he needed to lower his price; we asked, was there anything he could do to help us? He understood what that meant, and he came back with a price that was a penny (one cent) below the second source” (p. 242).
Which anecdote would you have selected to include in a chapter on cross‐cultural negotiation? I am in no doubt that my choice would be the latter one now discarded by Thompson. In my view, it has more enduring topicality and interest to students, most aged in their early twenties, than the one about an internationally unpopular former president who is rapidly acquiring “back in the day” status for them. I would contend that the Chinese anecdote certainly would seem more relevant to business students, including the ever‐increasing number of Chinese, Taiwanese, Singaporean, Japanese, and South Korean exchange students here in Europe. Obviously, I do not claim that every one of the replaced stories is better than the twelve new ones in the present edition. But I do question whether it was necessary to replace them all.
Moving on to Thompson's “ninety examples from the business world added since the last edition,” I have to admit that I did not search for these exhaustively. However, I suspect that here, too, a large number of “old” business examples was removed to accommodate all the “new” ones. Did many good business world babies get thrown out with the bathwater, one wonders?
Nor have I have tried to track down the “groundbreaking results of more than a hundred new scientific articles on negotiation” that have been cited in the present edition. What I have done, however, was to take a close look at the more than 360 section and subsection titles that are handily listed in the contents pages of the book and compare them to those from the previous edition. Here, I detected only a handful of differences, though newer research is undoubtedly embedded within the sections. What I do doubt, however, is whether much of the newer research is truly “groundbreaking.” This is such a big adjective and perhaps a bit overused (similar to “seminal” in this respect). I do not mean to belittle the excellent research on negotiation in recent years that has often been conducted by younger researchers, but were there one hundred plus articles published from 2005 to 2009 that truly qualify as “groundbreaking?”
What I have discovered as significant additions to the fourth edition are the welcome inclusion of a discussion on emotional intelligence and a small section on trust in online negotiation. There are also two paragraphs about the varying perceptions of time in different cultures.
If I were to answer my own question regarding the need for a new edition of this title, it would be in the negative. This is not to say I would not recommend it — this book has been, and remains, a fine achievement, but, in my view, it does not contain enough new information to warrant this fourth edition. What I am certain about is that students with access to cheaper copies of the third edition are not going to buy the new book. Rather, if the fourth edition is set as the course textbook, students will both use the copying machine and distract the teacher with queries about pagination.
A Note on Language
As a teacher of negotiation whose students are mostly nonnative speakers of English, I am always conscious of the degree of language difficulty in the course syllabus. A book or article may have excellent content, but it is of little use internationally if nonnative speaker students struggle to understand it. I have thus scrutinized the three books under review as regards language difficulty, and they all emerge pretty well. Admittedly, some words, phrases, or sentences may be a little hard to grasp from time to time. Generally, however, this cannot be blamed on the complexity of the language or, even more importantly, the length of the sentences. Understanding long convoluted sentences is usually more of a problem for foreign students than coping with unknown vocabulary. They can quickly look that up. None of the authors here could be accused of writing lengthy, complicated sentences; they keep the overwhelming majority of their sentences concise and relatively simple.
Summary and Recommendations
As my old bookmaker used to say, “You pays your money and you makes your choice.” She was talking about horses in a race, but I would extend the idiom to our three starters in this textbook race. This is what I would bear in mind before making my choice: If you want the latest edition of a title that has stood the test of time, then Essentials of Negotiation fits the bill. It contains all you need in a textbook for a basic negotiation course with the exception of a discussion of gender issues. Furthermore, the cartoons will bring a smile to your face. You do run the risk, however, of previous editions popping up like mushrooms in class, all with varying degrees of content and pagination differences.
If you prefer a new textbook with largely the same content as the Lewicki, Saunders, and Barry book but with none of the pagination problems, then Negotiating Essentials should be your selection. It is excellent if you are looking for a good chapter on culture and gender, and its design enhances student engagement. It also features good cartoons. You will not find a great deal on multiparty negotiation, however.
But if you prefer a value‐added book both in terms of quantity and price you should go for The Mind and Heart of the Negotiator. It contains more than 30 percent more material than the other two but is more than 20 percent more expensive. It features a superb discussion of multiparty negotiations and teams, and it is strong on gender issues. A largely American perspective on cross‐cultural negotiation and the two unfunny cartoons are blemishes, while the availability of various editions could present a potential coordination problem in class.
Let me conclude by saying that whatever obligatory textbook is chosen, no negotiation library would be complete without all three titles reviewed here. Each one is a quality book that makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the process of negotiation. Though sometimes similar in content, Essentials of Negotiation, Negotiating Essentials, and The Mind and Heart of the Negotiator are sufficiently different that Iwould recommend they all be read by everyone interested in becoming a better negotiator.