This issue illustrates both the diversity of scholarship in our field and our capacity to address pressing issues in a timely way. In the first half of the issue, we feature a fresh look (and framework) for understanding power in negotiations involving the public sector (particularly municipal governments), a companion article to one in our last issue on cross‐cultural business negotiations (also with a useful framework), a theoretical framework to guide problem‐solving workshops, a reflection honoring the memory of a pair of unique artist negotiators, and a book review of a major contribution to the literature on international diplomacy.
In the second half of the issue, we feature early reports on negotiations and conflict resolution in the context of the COVID‐19 pandemic (more on that below). While there is an ongoing need to document the continued learning and implications of the pandemic, we also issue here an invitation for submissions on a concurrent set of pressing questions associated with the racial and economic disparities surfaced by the pandemic, police shootings, and broader developments in society. How this writing will take shape relative to our field remains to be seen, but no scholar, practitioner, or policy maker cannot see the need to bring our expertise and lived experience to bear on the complex developments associated with Black Lives Matter, as well as other concurrent social movements such as #MeToo, #NeverAgain, and LGBTQ rights. All of these movements are intersectional, with identity on the table for negotiations in multiple ways. We look forward to serving as a timely forum on these matters.
The lead article in this issue, by Brian S. Mandell, Stephen Petraeus, and Guhan Subramanian, examines “Sources of Power in Public Negotiations,” offering “A Framework Applied to Public–Public and Public–Private Negotiations.” This is an “In Practice” article, though it has broad implications for theory, policy, and pedagogy. The article begins with Amazon’s reversal of its announced commitment to locate a second headquarters in New York City. The subsequent events reveal the unexpected power of small, vocal groups, and forums to influence the future of Amazon (and the city) despite support for the headquarters from the mayor, the governor, and a majority of the citizens. This example and other public–private partnerships, as well as public–public partnerships, do not fit neatly into traditional power categories such as reward, coercive, or legitimate power. Indeed, following the illustrative examples of theory disconnects, the review of classic power frameworks from organizational theory, negotiations theory, political science theory, and diplomacy theory is, alone, a valuable contribution by the coauthors.
More important, however, is the new framework, which combines what the coauthors term formal, mixed, and informal power. Emergent, socially constructed forms of power, such as momentum power and coalitional power, occupy the mixed category, while others draw on all of the presented theory domains (with a particularly strong nod to the many inventive examples of power in Thomas Schelling’s work). Three decades ago, power in public‐sector negotiations was a major focus in the industrial relations literature, but the literature has not been updated since then. This article not only provides the needed update, it also plows new ground with theory and an extended case example of public–public negotiation focusing on the complex negotiations between the state of New Hampshire and the city of Manchester around the opioid and homelessness crises.
In another practice article, “Planting Orange Trees in Twenty Cultures: The Practice of International Negotiations,” Mehdi Mahdavi, Navid Fatehi‐Rad, and John L. Graham provide the complement to their article in Negotiation Journal's summer 2020 issue. There the coauthors offer a new tool for understanding cultural differences and use it to investigate how culture influences negotiation behaviors, processes, and outcomes across twenty cultural groups. In this companion piece, the coauthors provide additional details on their data, along with tools to identify the scale and scope of cross‐cultural differences in advance of negotiations. Underlying the analysis is an appreciation for the many ways that cultural differences represent sources of value, driving creativity and invention that are not likely to occur when all share the same cultural identity. With appropriate cautions against cultural stereotyping and sensitivity to regional differences within nations, the database is used to illustrate contrasts (and some similarities) between Anglophone and Francophone Canadian negotiators; Brazilian and German negotiators; and negotiators from Iran and the United States. Not surprisingly, the differences between the Iranian and American negotiators are deep, and the coauthors provide useful guidance on avoiding the many likely negotiation traps associated with these differences.
Problem‐solving workshops are the bread and butter of our field. In “Transfer Effects from Problem‐Solving Workshops to Negotiations,” Ronald J. Fisher advances theory with “A Process and Outcome Model” consisting of eight sequential components that capture the process and outcomes of transfer from problem‐solving workshops to negotiation, policy making, and political discourse. The article first traces the emergence and documentation of the transfer method, noting the key contrast between internal and external effectiveness of problem‐solving workshops. For practitioners, the article provides a road map that can help ensure effectiveness on both dimensions. For theorists, the article is an invitation for others to join in the exploration—validating the model or suggesting what might be added or adjusted. At a time of pervasive social change, theorizing about and guiding problem‐solving workshops is more important than ever.
Among the thirteen recipients of the “Great Negotiator Award” from the Program on Negotiation, the artists Christo and Jeanne‐Claude represent the most nontraditional and the most delightful. In “The Negotiation of Art and Vice Versa,” Michael Wheeler, editor emeritus of this journal, reflects on the unique lessons to be learned from this couple, who are famous for more than twenty large‐scale ephemeral installations including Running Fence, a fabric structure 20 feet high and 24.5 miles long stretching through the hills of Northern California down to the ocean. Motivating the reflections is the recent passing of Christo, who was predeceased by Jeanne‐Claude. As Wheeler documents, they conducted many negotiations to bring their work to fruition—first for the resources to support their art; second for the creation of value (and even an audience) for their art; and lastly, and most difficult, for the installation of their art on public and private lands.
This is not a typical scholarly article and yet it is precisely the kind of scholarship that we should see more of. For teachers of negotiation this article is sure to be a discussion starter, highlighting themes of vision, persistence, rationality, and the construction of meaning. For anyone in the field, the article is a window on the art of negotiation as uniquely practiced by these two extraordinary artists.
Book reviews in Negotiation Journal are an occasion for reflection on a book (or books) within a larger context. In Kelly McFarland’s review of Landmark Negotiations from Around the World: Lessons for Modern Diplomacy—edited by Emmanuel Vivet—the book’s mission becomes clear: to highlight the importance of history, and especially history’s importance to diplomacy. The book’s contributors explore thirty case studies in order to show the many ways that history provides lessons for current and future diplomatic practitioners. Both the book and McFarland’s review provide essential reading for anyone seeking to understand how past diplomacy becomes woven into present dynamics. The review provides a thorough accounting of what is in the book and notes one key omission—the lack of attention to an emerging domain, applied history. Consideration of applied history is important considering that the book can be seen as an exemplar for this type of work.
Special Section: Negotiations and Conflict Resolution During the Global Pandemic
Early in the COVID‐19 pandemic, we reached out to our editorial advisory board and others to signal an interest in submissions related to negotiations and the pandemic. We are pleased to present four articles developed in a relatively short time frame that begin to address the diverse implications of the pandemic. As the lead article in this special section notes, there has been considerable outreach on this issue by scholarly publishers, professional societies, private and public foundations, and others. Indeed, as the article notes, the publisher of this journal, Wiley, has set up an open Coronavirus hub for sharing published work across its many titles. It has had over 360,000 page views and the Wiley Online Library has had an additional 6.7 million COVID‐19 article views. To support the research community, Wiley continues to add all new COVID‐19 articles as they are published and is making them all freely available. We are delighted to add a negotiations and conflict resolution perspective to this collection. We invite additional scholarship on the implications of and perspectives on the pandemic to further add to the collection.
The lead article in this special section addresses the “Negotiated Sharing of Pandemic Data, Models, and Resources.” There is great urgency surrounding the sharing of pandemic data, models, and resources, though the norms and practices for sharing vary considerably across fields, disciplines, and domains. At stake is the renegotiation of the negotiated order in science, academia, society, and commerce, and the article is a preliminary report on practices during the pandemic in order to anticipate what may or may not persist afterward. The contribution is by the Stakeholder Alignment Collaborative, with nineteen of the members of the collaborative contributing (including the editor of this journal), so it is a collaborative studying collaboration. Drawing on their own direct experience with collaboration and sharing in science, as well as preliminary interviews with stakeholders, the coauthors find that politics has had a chilling effect on collaboration in some cases, while prizes and competitions have generated immediate responses but are not always set up to generate continuing collaboration. In this preliminary macro study of negotiated change, multi‐stakeholder, precompetitive consortia hold promise for sustained impacts following the inflection point in the pandemic.
In “Designing Binge‐Worthy Courses: Pandemic Pleasures and COVID Consequences,” Noam Ebner and Elayne E. Greenberg consider how the neuropsychology associated with binge‐watching television might be applied to negotiation pedagogy. To combat pervasive “Zoom fatigue,” Ebner and Greenberg offer energizing insights into how to create remote courses that are, as they suggest, “like a gripping miniseries.” First, the article powerfully accounts for the many energy‐draining forms of dissonance that drive Zoom fatigue, some readily apparent and some subtle. These alone are key insights, but they are more important for how they set the stage for a rethinking of course structure and content. Laying out the importance of a narrative hook, strong character development, and the creation of contexts for the characters’ interactions and conflicts, the article is sure to motivate a rethinking of virtual learning that will have continuing value beyond the pandemic.
Bartering may be one of the oldest forms of negotiation, yet Brian C. Gunia and Roy J. Lewicki note that it has received little attention in the negotiation literature in “Bartering as a Blind Spot: A Call to Action from COVID‐19.” The exchange of goods and services without the use of money poses a unique negotiation challenge, the coauthors note, since each barterer must find a party with whom each can exchange something it wants less for something it needs more. While money makes such trades far less complex, bartering remains a common practice and it is increasing in prevalence (or, as the coauthors note, at least in prominence) as COVID‐19 disrupts supply chains, increases local interdependencies, and forces cashless transactions for people whose income has been disrupted. The article is important for opening up consideration of an under‐researched domain in our field, which has promise for revealing negotiated interactions that may be less governed by fixed‐pie thinking and more oriented around underlying interests, and may even represent a preferred alternative to monetary exchange. In reading the article’s suggestions for pedagogy (as well as theory), I was reminded of one of my favorite student journal entries, which centered on the tacit negotiation in a supermarket checkout line where the student sought, without words, to achieve the needed exchange to get a dour cashier to smile before the end of the transaction. This may have been the tiniest possible form of exchange, but it helps to open up appreciation for the many negotiated interactions that don’t involve monetary exchange (or, in the case of the dour cashier, where the monetary exchange was entirely incidental to the negotiation).
Hybrid warfare may be a new term to many readers of this journal, but it is a highly consequential development for security experts, involving extreme asymmetrical actions, such as hacking into secure systems, secretly purchasing lower‐tier suppliers to military organizations, employing paramilitary groups, and a wide range of actions that constitute warfare by other means. In “Hybrid Warfare, International Negotiation, and an Experiment in ‘Remote Convening,’” an international group of experts discuss their plans to address these complex and sensitive matters within the constraints of the virtual sessions required by the pandemic. Issues of trust and confidentiality join basic matters of virtual facilitation and collaboration on an issue that can’t be put off until it is again safe to gather in the traditional extended offsite format used for these types of sessions. The coauthors, Chris Honeyman, Calvin Chrustie, Andrea Kupfer Schneider, Véronique Fraser, and Barney Jordaan pull back the curtain to share their thoughts in advance of the virtual session and plan to report back afterward.
All of the articles in the special section pose an implicit or explicit question: Will changes during the global pandemic persist afterward? The issue of behavioral change in crisis is an enduring one for our field—crises can unfreeze relations in constructive ways but the changes are often discounted as limited to the crisis conditions. How new patterns may persist after a crisis is not just an abstract question during the pandemic—it is a very real challenge as all the articles in this special section demonstrate. We predict and welcome continued submissions that wrestle with these challenges during and following the pandemic, as well as further contributions on the many concurrent social movements in today’s world.
