N7 Finding and Using Negotiation Power

Chapter 7 Finding and Using Negotiation Power

There were two major ways to think about power: "power over," which suggests that power is fundamentally dominating and coercive in nature, and "power with," suggesting that power is jointly shared with the other party to collectively develop joint goals and objectives. There is a great tendency to see and define power as the former, but as we have discussed in this chapter and our review of the basic negotiation strategies, "power with" is critical to successful integrative negotiation.

Five major sources of power:

1.             Informational sources of power (information and expertise).

2.             Personal sources of power (psychological orientation, cognitive orientation, motivational orientation, certain dispositions, and moral orientation and skills).

3.             Position-based sources of power (legitimate power and resource control).

4.             Relationship-based power (goal interdependence and referent power and networks).

5.             Contextual sources of power (availability of BATNAs, availability of agents, and the organizational or national culture in which the negotiation occurs).

Two key points. First, while it has presented many vehicles for attaining power in this chapter, it must be remembered that power can be highly elusive and fleeting in negotiation. Almost anything can be a source of power if it gives the negotiator a temporary advantage over the other party (e.g., a BATNA or a piece of critical information). Second, power is only the capacity to influence; using that power and skillfully exerting influence on the other requires a great deal of sophistication and experience.