Publications

April 2017
Article

BATNAs in Negotiation: Common Errors and Three Kinds of 'No'

By: James K. Sebenius

The Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement (“BATNA”) concept in negotiation has proven to be immensely useful. In tandem with its value in practice, BATNA has become a wildly successful acronym (with more than 14 million Google results). But the initial... View Details

Keywords: Agreements and Arrangements; Negotiation Tactics

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JAMES K. (“Jim”) SEBENIUS, is the Gordon Donaldson Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, where he founded the Negotiation unit and teaches advanced... View Details

July 9, 2014
Article

A Great Negotiator's Essential Advice

By: James K. Sebenius

The Program on Negotiation (PON), an active Harvard-MIT-Tufts consortium, honored View Details

Keywords: Negotiation Process; Negotiation Tactics; Personal Development and Career; Negotiation Style; Singapore

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June 2001
Supplement

Privatization of Anatolia National Telekom, The: Note on Valuation of Privatizing Enterprises in Emerging Markets

Anatolia National Telekom is a multiparty negotiation simulation patterned after the Turkish government's aborted attempt to privatize its state-owned telecommunications monopoly, Turk Telekom, in late 1997. Provides participants with an opportunity to identify and... View Details

Keywords: Negotiation; Privatization; Emerging Markets; State Ownership; Telecommunications Industry; Turkey

October 2008 (Revised September 2011)
Supplement

PepsiCo's Bid for Quaker Oats (B)

By: Carliss Y. Baldwin and Leonid Soudakov

Second in a series on PepsiCo's bid for Quaker Oats. Describes the negotiations between PepsiCo and Quaker including due-diligence process, first bid, and counteroffer. Quaker's counteroffer included a collar on equity consideration, and thus the case offers an... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Equity; Bids and Bidding; Negotiation Offer; Negotiation Preparation; Valuation; Food and Beverage Industry

17 Apr 2024
Video

Career Journeys | Katie Kochert

June 1991 (Revised February 1993)
Case

Cumberland Worldwide Corp. (A)

A company in financial distress must design a successful exchange offer or face Chapter 11. Covers valuation and negotiation issues related to financial distress and the decision to file under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code. View Details

Keywords: Negotiation; Valuation; Insolvency and Bankruptcy

January–February 2025
Article

What People Still Get Wrong About Negotiations: They Assume the Size of the Pie Is Fixed—and So Miss Opportunities to Create Value

By: Max H. Bazerman

Most executives leave value on the negotiating table, for two main reasons: First, many executives mistakenly believe that they’re negotiating over a fixed pie and that gains for one side necessarily mean losses for the other. Second, they focus exclusively on how to... View Details

Keywords: Negotiation Offer; Negotiation Tactics; Value; Communication; Trust

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2025
Book

Negotiation: The Game Has Changed

By: Max Bazerman

The world has changed dramatically in just the past few years—and so has the game of negotiation. COVID-19, Zoom, political polarization, the online economy, increasing economic globalization, and greater workplace diversity—all have transformed the who, what, where,... View Details

Keywords: Negotiation; Change

02 Apr 2021
Research & Ideas

Salary Negotiations: A Catch-22 for Women

executives. Members of the group negotiated in groups of two: 43 percent of the pairs included a woman and a man, 43 percent were only men, and 14 percent were only women. The research team randomly assigned some participants—both women... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz

17 Nov 2010
News

The New Deal: Negotiauctions

18 Mar 2022
News

Finding Exit to War in Ukraine

May 1994 (Revised November 1995)
Case

Shawmut National Corporation's Merger with Bank of Boston Corporation (A)

By: Benjamin C. Esty

Presents the merger negotiations between Bank of Boston (BOB) and Shawmut National Corp. (SNC), two of the country's largest bank holding companies and requires students to value BOB's current offer for SNC. Provides an overview of recent events and trends in the... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Banks and Banking; Ethics; Negotiation; Valuation; Management; Banking Industry; United States

June 2017
Article

A Systematic Approach to Discussing Active Surveillance with Patients with Low-risk Prostate Cancer

By: Behfar Ehdaie, Melissa Assel, Nicole Benfante, Deepak Malhotra and Andrew Vickers

A systematic approach to counseling—using appropriate framing techniques derived from principles studied by negotiation scholars—can be taught to physicians in a one-hour lecture. We found evidence that even this minimal intervention can decrease overtreatment of... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Health Disorders; Service Delivery; Negotiation; Health Industry

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November 2022
Case

Jon Fortt: The Art of Debate and Effective Communication

By: Francesca Gino, Sarah Livick-Moses and Ruth Page

This stand-alone multimedia case explores the art of communication in the space of negotiation. It follows the career journey of business journalist, media influencer, and co-anchor of CNBC's "Squawk Alley," Jon Fortt. He offers reflections on the race crisis in the... View Details

Keywords: Communication; Negotiation; Race

19 Mar 2019
First Look

New Research and Ideas, March 19, 2019

simple move: Fox offered more money than CBS. A closer analysis, however, suggests a far more complex reality with ten broader lessons for negotiators facing challenging situations. Download working paper:... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

22 May 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, May 22, 2018

McGinn Abstract—Using a randomized control trial, we examine whether offering adolescent girls nonmaterial resources—specifically, negotiation skills—can improve educational outcomes in a low-income country.... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

2012
Working Paper

Level II Negotiations: Helping the Other Side Meet Its 'Behind the Table' Challenges

By: James K. Sebenius

A long analytic tradition explores the challenge of productively synchronizing "internal" with "external" negotiations, especially focusing on how each side can best manage internal opposition to agreements negotiated "at the table." Implicit in much of this work is... View Details

Keywords: Negotiation; Conflict Management; Agreements and Arrangements; Government and Politics; Mathematical Methods; United States; Germany