Teaching Ideas

Hewlett Conference 2000:Focus on Negotiation Pedagogy

Sara Cobb,Guest Editor

This special issue of Negotiation Journal is one of the products ofthe March 9-12, 2000 meeting, “Hewlett Conference 2000: Focus onNegotiation Pedagogy,” a remarkable gathering at Harvard Universitywhich was generously supported by the William and Flora HewlettFoundation. Hosted by the Program on Negotiation at Harvard LawSchool — the original Hewlett negotiation research center — thismeeting brought together more than 100 scholars to engage incross-disciplinary discussion of negotiation pedagogy as it relates tomethods, evaluation processes, skill training, culture and genderissues.

Most of the conference participants are faculty at the more than 20university-based negotiation research centers which were foundedover the past quarter-century with the support and guidance of theHewlett Foundation. The work presented in this issue, designed toappeal to both negotiation scholars and practitioners, is but oneexample of advances in negotiation theory and practice that are adirect result of the Hewlett Foundation’s commitment to this field.

We gratefully acknowledge the Foundation’s assistance in thisendeavor and, in particular, the help of its outgoing executive direc-tor, Stephen Toben, a colleague whose leadership and vision hasgreatly contributed to the development of the dispute resolutioncommunity.

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Negotiation Pedagogy:Learning to Learn

Sara Cobb

Students of negotiation often ask instructors to deliver a pat set of strategicmoves that would routinely (if not inevitably) lead to effective negotiation.They seek some magic, though perhaps nonexistent, formula for manufac-turing good outcomes.

In fact, the field’s preference for prescriptive advice is evidence notonly of our focus on practice, but also our faith that doing negotiation canbe theoretically modeled, independent of context, so as to yield prescrip-tions for practice (Raiffa 1982). However, many scholars have pointed toshortcomings in the research on negotiation process designed to yield strate-gies alone, consistently calling on the researchers, for example, to: addvariables (Bazerman, Curhan, and Moore 2000); increase attention to cultureand context (Avurch 1998); track the relation between initial conditions andoutcomes (Leary and Wheeler 2000); focus on relational attributions (Valleyand Keros 2000), as well as social psychological (Allred 2000) and interper-sonal processes (Putnam and Holmer 1992).

While game theory and decision analysis have provided highly usefulvocabularies for tracking and predicting negotiation outcomes, they are notdesigned to attend to the human and social aspects of negotiation process.Even behavioral economic perspectives, which presume irrationality andpredict the presence of bias in the negotiation process, recognize the limitsof laboratory research designs’ capacity to yield prescriptive knowledge thatcan address the complexities of interpretative processes. How can we recon-cile the negotiation field’s yearning for prescriptions with the inevitably

Sara Cobb is Executive Director of the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, 513 PoundHall, Harvard Law School, Cambridge, Mass. 02138. Email: cobb@law.harvard.edu. Among other top-ics, her research and writing have focused on the role of narratives in both conflict andreconciliation processes.

continguent and particular processes of interpretation that are core to thenegotiation processes?

Our solution, as a field, is to teach process. Interest-based, problem-solv-ing, or consensus-building approaches to disputes and dealmaking allprovide descriptions of the stages of a negotiation process, with prescrip-tions on how to: diagnose problems (Raiffa 1982; Fisher, Ury, and Patton1991); structure deals (Lax and Sebenius 1986); foster the participation ofstakeholders (Dukes 1996); or build consensus (Susskind, McKearnan, andThomas-Larmer 1999). While these process prescriptions have enriched ourpractice, they remain formulaic and ill-equipped to address the complexitiesof interpretative processes that themselves reflect the politics of identity andcultural constraints. So while they provide a working set of global processprescriptions, they begin to “wobble” under the weight of local, particularconditions that are implicated in any interpretative process.

Taylor (1971: 122) has described interpretative processes as a functionof the web of “intersubjective meaning” that makes both consensus and itsabsence, dissensus, possible; in other words, agreement and disagreementare both a function of the field of meaning that emerges as people interact.While we may not be able to predict with precision what meanings willemerge, we do know that the processes of reflection and inquiry enablethose who are in this field of meaning to take stock of it, and to alter it.Applied to negotiation, this inquiry process is not just an exploration ofinterests or needs; rather, it is the systematic inquiry with people into thewhy of their needs and interests. This is a highly dynamic process that helpsto construct the “why” and reflexively shapes and transforms the needs andinterests under discussion. This focus on reflective inquiry, as core to negoti-ation process, adds complexity to our prescriptive process formulas, for itpresumes that negotiation is an emergent process.

Dewey noted almost a century ago that reflective inquiry is the processof exploring the foundations for belief. In turn, these “foundations” for beliefare the stories we tell about self and others (see Dewey 1910). To practicereflective inquiry, people must attend to the story they are telling about thecharacters involved (“us” and “them”); about any plot sequences that areinvolved; plus the moral corollaries that they would say are at issue. From thisperspective, negotiation practice is a storytelling practice, one that requiresboth that we be able to assess critically what story is being unfolded, as wellas how to emerge one that yields collaboration and participation.

Understanding stories, in turn, requires a set of theoretical assumptions:

(a) that social process (negotiation) is both dynamic and interactive — sto-ries emerge in interaction;

(b) that problematic stories are transformed through interaction;

(c) that the transformation of stories requires reflection and inquiry withothers, over time; and

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(d) that fostering inquiry (in self and others) is facilitated by appreciativeand legitimizing moves in interaction, rather than negative and delegit-imizing moves.

Overall, as the field of negotiation moves to address interpretative (and non-linear) processes, our focus is increasingly on the nature of the inquiry thatenables reflection on the stories we tell about self/other, as well as those sto-ries which are told about us by others.

Negotiation pedagogy can thus be seen as a second-order practice oflearning how to help others negotiate the stories they tell — how to navi-gate the intersubjective space where meaning itself emerges. What wouldthis pedagogy look like? How can we teach negotiation practice in ways thatfavor strategic competency, as well as interpretative competency? Can we“instruct” students in reflective inquiry, or can we only invite them intoreflection through case-based simulations? What is the relation betweenthese simulations and the very real problems that students have in negotiat-ing the “real” stories in their lives? What is the nature of the student/teacherrelationship that is conducive to reflective inquiry? Should traditional grad-ing systems be used where students are evaluated on their capacity toengage reflectively? How can we enable students to manage the context ofnegotiation where the politics of identity (gender, race, and class) tends toregulate who can participate, as well as how they participate? How wouldwe structure our negotiation classrooms so that the politics of identity of theclassroom itself can be addressed?

The move to a more interpretative approach to negotiation, however, isnot equivalent to a move away from prescription, for while we may not beable to predict and control interpretative processes, we can develop bestpractices as to how to foster learning and reflection on those processes. Anexamination of negotiation and how we teach it — in effect, learning tolearn — took place at “Hewlett Conference 2000: Focus on Negotiation Ped-agogy.” Held March 9-12, 2000 at Harvard University, this conference broughttogether negotiation faculty from all of the Hewlett negotiation research cen-ters. Drawing on some of his recent work (Gardner 1999 and 2000), theconference’s keynote speaker, Howard Gardner, framed much of our discov-ery process, challenging along three important themes:

(1) If we accept that there are multiple intelligences, what are those that arecore to learning negotiation practice?

(2) If learning is maximized by accessing multiple intelligences, how can weincrease the diversity of intelligences activated in negotiation class-rooms? and

(3) If we often must unlearn in order to enact inquiry, as Gardner suggests,how can we foster unlearning in our classrooms? How can we enablestudents to move beyond their assumptions about self, other, and thenegotiation process, to try out new ways of being and interacting? How

can we encourage them to unravel and transform their interpretativeschemas?

Howard Gardner’s contribution in this special issue of Negotiaion Jour-nal helps us raise these questions and, even though he does not provide theanswers, the questions alone provoke new ways of understanding and evalu-ating our negotiation pedagogy. Ironically, Gardner’s notion that“unlearning” is core to learning is perhaps a strategy both for developing anegotiation pedagogy, as well as evolving our theoretical frames. Learninghow to learn is more about the questions we ask, than perhaps the answers(prescriptions) that we provide. And, if we follow this line, we may discover(invent) ways to inquire that generate not only answers, but also yield rela-tionships that favor more inquiry and innovation. Second-order learning(learning how to learn) may be a process for generating stories that are morecollaborative than adversarial, creating spiral loops of learning, reflection,and collaboration. And it may, paradoxically, require that negotiation class-rooms become places where faculty and students, unlearn together.

Following the Gardner interview is Ron Fortgang’s report and commen-tary on a survey of negotiation pedagogy across four professional domains:law, business, public policy, and international relations. The complete sur-vey (which is available at the Program on Negotiation’s website,www.pon.harvard.edu) provides base-line data on how negotiation is beingtaught in these four areas. Next, following the structure of the “HewlettConference 2000” agenda, three essays focus on how teachers shouldaddress culture and gender issues in teaching negotiation. Kevin Avruch’sessay is a call for increased attention to culture in negotiation theory andresearch, as well as in negotiation pedagogy. Deborah Kolb offers a view ona feminist practice of negotiation pedagogy, helping readers contemplatehow they can help students address gender in their negotiation practice.Carrie Menkel-Meadow provides a set of prescriptions for how negotiationteachers can address gender, in light of the findings from research on genderand negotiation.

In keeping with the conference structure, the next essays focus on thesocial psychological and interpretative processes that are implicated in nego-tiation process, showing how these can be addressed in the classroomthrough exercises that allow the students to take the role of the other, andsee themselves in the eyes of the other, enabling them to develop new strate-gies for interaction with others. Bob Bordone’s essay describes the role ofthe Interpersonal Skills Training exercise, used in the negotiation courses atHarvard Law School, while Keith Allred reports on important research on atool that allows students to compare what they see to be their negotiationcompetency with how others view them as negotiators.

In the last section of this issue, Jeff Loewenstein and Leigh Thompsonprovide research findings which demonstrate that learning via analogy yields“actionable knowledge” (see Argyris 1993). They have found that studentsasked to develop comparisons across cases are better able to apply their

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knowledge to future cases, than students who do not. This research suggestthat the way students engage with the cases is core to their learning. Finally,Dan Shapiro offers a blueprint for what he calls “supplemental joint brain-storming,” a technique aimed at helping negotiation teachers and trainers toshow how people can, as Gardner advises, break away from theirentrenched habits.

All of these essays help advance our understanding of negotiation peda-gogy, in relation to the evolution of our theories of negotiation. Anticipatingthat learning involves reflection, and that this reflection is itself an inquiryinto the interpretative processes that are core to negotiation practice, theauthors thus speak not only to the frontiers of our knowledge about how toteach negotiation, but also to the frontiers of negotiation practice as well.From this perspective, this special issue challenges some core assumptionsabout our theories and our best practices, requiring us to address the com-plexity that arises, as our capacity to predict and control wanes.

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Avruch, K. 1998. Culture and conflict resolution. Washington: U.S. Institute of Peace Press.Bazerman, M., J. Curhan, and D. Moore. 2000. The death and rebirth of the social psychology of

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