The Definition of Negotiation: A Play in Three Acts

This article is based on a provocative conversation between Andrea Kupfer Schneider, Noam Ebner, and David Matz as they drove to the airport following the University of Missouri’s symposium, Moving Negotiation Theory From the Tower of Babel Toward a World of Mutual Understanding. After a while, John Lande metaphorically joined their quest to find a good definition of negotiation. They considered examples of interactions with deans, judges, bank officers, grocers, drivers, terrorists, and muggers, among others, to try to identify critical elements of negotiation. For example, can the interaction be called a negotiation, if one party holds all the cards? Is it a negotiation if only one party is interested in negotiating? This article should stimulate readers’ thinking about this deceptively challenging question, and is particularly appropriate for use in negotiation courses.