Max H. Bazerman is the Jesse Isidor Straus Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and a codirector of the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard Kennedy School.
Daniel Kahneman is a professor of psychology and public affairs emeritus at the Woodrow Wilson School and the Eugene Higgins Professor of Psychology Emeritus at Princeton University.
Please answer two quick questions:
1 When negotiating, do you want the other side to be reasonable?
Is it a good idea to be reasonable in negotiations?
Everyone we ask says yes to the first question, but answers diverge in response to the second. Academics lean toward yes, but businesspeople and lawyers often hesitate. In legal disputes, contested insurance claims, and similarly adversarial negotiations, they point out, the other party is likely to open with an inflated claim or…
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Harvard Business Review (Digital) - 1 Issue, September 2016