Introduction
Our work as negotiation consultants involves not only the negotiation process itself, but we are often required to design an overall negotiation structure with which to facilitate productive negotiations. This is particularly true of highly complex negotiations where multiple interest groups must be engaged, and many complex issues need to be resolved. Examples might be land usage and environmental negotiations, policy and regulation negotiations, and peace negotiations in conflict-infested regions.
In these kinds of negotiations, success is largely contingent upon how the negotiating structure is setup: who will be represented and who will represent; how will discussions and dialogue be managed; how will information be shared; what should the sequence of the issues be; how will decisions be made and ratified, and so on.
The design of the negotiation structure is, in itself, a complex negotiation which needs to precede the later substantive negotiations so as to increase the chance of overall success.
Perhaps the paradigm of extremely complex negotiations today is the Brexit negotiations – the “divorce” and untangling between England and the European Union. There are many stakeholders both in Europe and the United Kingdom, with a plethora of very complicated issues that need to be resolved in a way that all parties can live with. Issues include the looming questions of: trade; migration; Britain meeting her financial commitments to the EU budget; rights of citizens and workers; the border within Ireland (between the Republic of Ireland which will remain in the EU and Northern Ireland which will leave the bloc as part of the UK). These together with many other thorny issues will need to be negotiated.
Our work as negotiation consultants involves not only the negotiation process itself, but we are often required to design an overall negotiation structure with which to facilitate productive negotiations. This is particularly true of highly complex negotiations where multiple interest groups must be engaged, and many complex issues need to be resolved. Examples might be land usage and environmental negotiations, policy and regulation negotiations, and peace negotiations in conflict-infested regions.
In these kinds of negotiations, success is largely contingent upon how the negotiating structure is setup: who will be represented and who will represent; how will discussions and dialogue be managed; how will information be shared; what should the sequence of the issues be; how will decisions be made and ratified, and so on.
The design of the negotiation structure is, in itself, a complex negotiation which needs to precede the later substantive negotiations so as to increase the chance of overall success.
Perhaps the paradigm of extremely complex negotiations today is the Brexit negotiations – the “divorce” and untangling between England and the European Union. There are many stakeholders both in Europe and the United Kingdom, with a plethora of very complicated issues that need to be resolved in a way that all parties can live with. Issues include the looming questions of: trade; migration; Britain meeting her financial commitments to the EU budget; rights of citizens and workers; the border within Ireland (between the Republic of Ireland which will remain in the EU and Northern Ireland which will leave the bloc as part of the UK). These together with many other thorny issues will need to be negotiated.
