On Teaching
World Championship in Negotiation?
The Role of Competitions in
Negotiation Pedagogy
Remigiusz Smolinski and Peter Kesting
The last decade has seen the emergence of several new negotiation competitions around the world.We think the two major drivers of this development are a general trend toward the increasing international-ization of higher education and a recognition of the specific benefits of competitions for negotiation pedagogy. These benefits include: the high level of student commitment generated by participation in a compe-tition, which enhances the quality of negotiation; the opportunity that the competitions give students to experience authentic cultural diver-sity; and the networking opportunities for students and instructors that the competitions create. This article focuses on the role that nego-tiation competitions can play in negonego-tiation pedagogy. We first present an overview of the currently most important international negotia-tion competinegotia-tions. This is followed by an outline of the specific benefits of negotiation competitions for pedagogy.We then take a closer look at the organization and outcome of negotiation competitions and discuss the opportunities for their development and growth.
Key words: negotiation competition, negotiation pedagogy,
negotiation teaching, cross-cultural negotiation, out-of-classroom education, networking.
Remigiusz Smolinskiis a research associate at Aarhus University’s School of Business and Social Sciences in Aarhus, Denmark. His e-mail address is resmo@asb.dk.
Peter Kesting is an associate professor at Aarhus University’s School of Business and Social Sciences. His e-mail address is petk@asb.dk.
10.1111/nejo.12029
Introduction
The last decade has witnessed a noticeable increase in the number of new negotiation and mediation competitions1for students. The two oldest of the negotiation competitions is the Williston Negotiation Competition, which was in its sixtieth year in 2013, and the American Bar Association (ABA) Negotiation Competition, which took place for the first time in 1984. Both the Williston and ABA competitions are regional in their ori-entation, involving students solely from American and Canadian schools. The most established international competitions are the International Negotiation Competition for Law Students (1998), the International Academy of Dispute Resolution Mediation Competition (2001), the ICC International Mediation Competition (2006) (see Greg Bond’s article in this issue), the Negotiation Challenge (2007), and the Warsaw Negotiation Round (2010).
Negotiation competitions are becoming increasingly popular among students, as indicated by the increase in both the number and quality of applications every year. Recognizing their importance, some universities strongly encourage their students to participate in such competitions and regularly send negotiation teams, providing them with coaches and often even paying the associated costs. Negotiation competitions have become an established element of international negotiation education.
Despite their popularity and importance, little research on negotiation competitions has been conducted. We think that negotiation competitions are particularly useful for negotiation pedagogy because they offer students unique experiences that are difficult to acquire in any other “synthetic” educational setting; participants typically become more committed to com-petition activities than they do to standard classroom exercises and also find the experience much more emotionally intense (Ogilvie and Carsky 2002; Shapiro 2006; Honeyman, Coben, and De Palo 2009b). They also benefit from the competition’s cultural diversity by interacting with stu-dents from different countries who have not yet adapted to a joint “host culture” and with students who have been trained by teachers from diverse negotiation backgrounds who use varied teaching approaches (Honeyman, Coben, and De Palo 2009a; Salacuse 2010). Finally, the competitions offer excellent opportunities to network with students and instructors from a variety of different institutions (Levin and Thurston 1996; Bienzle et al. 2007).
Our focus here is on the role of negotiation competitions in develop-ing participants’ negotiation skills, as well as in builddevelop-ing a community of negotiation instructors. We base our discussion on our own experiences and on the feedback we received from structured interviews conducted with participating students and their coaches during negotiation competi-tions that we have either organized ourselves or were involved in as
advisors or judges. In addition, we have gathered online information about other negotiation competitions and supplemented this with a questionnaire survey of competition organizers.
Major Negotiation Competitions
Table One below lists the main negotiation and mediation competitions. The majority of these competitions are organized and hosted by academic institutions (some also have corporate sponsorship),but the list of organizers also includes a professional association (ABA) and a chamber of commerce (the International Chamber of Commerce [ICC] in Paris). Most of the competitions that we have identified focus on graduate students,and only one of them is also open to undergraduates (the Warsaw Negotiation Round). The most well-established competitions are only open to law students and focus on the resolution of legal disputes. Some of the newer ones are also open to business students and some even focus on business negotiations (ICC International Mediation Competition, the Negotiation Challenge, and the Warsaw Negotiation Round). There is no specific competition for students of political science, diplomacy, sociology, etc., but students from other disci-plines have access to several of the competitions, although some of the competitions require them to team up with a law student. Common to all competitions is that students participate in teams,comprising from two to five players.
All negotiation competitions we identified take place annually.Almost all of them have a strong educational focus on developing basic negotiation and mediation skills and techniques. They also expose students to“cross-cultural communication as well as potential differences in negotiation styles, ethical limitations, social norms, and business practices” (International Competition for Law Students) and “cultural diversity in the process of negotiation” (Warsaw Negotiation Round).The majority of the competitions also explicitly focus on networking and the creation of awareness about the field.
With the exception of the Williston Negotiation Competition, all these competitions comprise several rounds in which different cases or role-plays are subsequently negotiated or mediated. In two of the competitions (ABA Negotiation Competition and International Negotiation Competition for Law Students), general instructions for the role-plays or cases are distrib-uted to the teams beforehand to allow more time for preparation. Most of the competitions are structured in rounds in which teams are ranked or steadily eliminated leaving the strongest teams to face off against each other in the final round. The number of rounds — and the duration of the competitions — varies widely, with the ICC International Mediation Com-petition being the most comprehensive. (It comprises four group rounds and four finals, stretching over six days).
Some of the biggest differences between the competitions include the general type of role-plays (or cases or simulations) used (distributive versus
Table One
Major Negotiation Competitions
Competition Name, Website
Organizers, Aim First competition, Frequency, Place
• Harvard Negotiators and a board of student advisors • Education
• 1953 • Annual
• Harvard Law School
• Teams of 2 students • Harvard Law School first-year students only • 20 teams in 2010
• One comprehensive many-issue case, complex business problems • Value creation; value
claiming; drafting
• American Bar Association • Education
• 1984 • Annual
• Changing locations in the U.S. and Canada • 10 regional competitions
are held across the U.S. and Canada
• Teams of two students • The team members have
to attend the same ABA-approved law school (or Canadian
LSAC-member law school) • 228 teams in 2012
• Legal negotiations • Two rounds plus two
finals
• Organized by an executive committee with members representing various regions of the world • Education, networking,
increasing interest in the topic
• 1998
• Annual (late June or early July)
• Changing locations worldwide: 2009 Chicago, 2010 The Gold Cost, Australia, 2011 Copenhagen, 2012 Belfast, 2013 Orange, CA
• Teams of 2 law students • With the exception of
new entrants, participants are usually the winners of a recognised national competition • No fixed number of
teams: multiple of 4 — there have been 20 teams in the last two
competitions.
• Cross-border transactions or disputes
4. International Academy of
• International Academy of Dispute Resolution • Education, increasing
interest in the topic
• 2001 • Annual
• Changing locations worldwide: 2013 in Dublin, 2012 in Chicago, 2011 in London
• 3 graduate students per team
• Law students only • Max. 36 teams
• Students serve as mediators, advocators and clients. • Three qualification
rounds plus one final • The ability to collaborate
and to guide parties to a dispute resolution
5. International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) International Mediation Competition
http://iccwbo.org/ mediationcompetition/
• International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), Paris
• Either law or business students (including at least one law student; professional mediators • 57 teams in 2011, 66
teams in 2012 and 2013
• Real-life commercial mediations
• Four rounds plus four finals
• A written mediation plan; performance during the mediation
• Special awards
6. The Negotiation Challenge
thenegotiationchallenge.org/
increasing interest in the topic
• 2007 • Annual
• 2007–2011 in Leipzig, 2012 in Paris, 2013 in Athens
• Teams of three students majoring in law or business
• 8 teams in 2007, 12 teams in 2008–2011, 18 teams in 2012 and 2013
• Different types of commercial and non-commercial negotiations
• Four qualification rounds plus a final
• Scores, problem-solving abilities, value creation and claiming, the final is judged by a jury
7. Warsaw Negotiation Round
http://www.warsawnegotiation round.pl
• Warsaw School of Economics
• Education, networking, increasing interest in the topic
• 2010 • Annual • Warsaw
• Teams of three students majoring in law or business • 12 teams
• Different types of scoreable negotiations • Three to four
qualification rounds plus a final
integrative), the role that participants play (involved parties versus media-tors), and the dispute or problem at the heart of the negotiation (cross-border commercial disputes between at least two entities, complex, multi-issue business problems, legal problems, etc.). Two of the competi-tions (the Negotiation Challenge and the Warsaw Negotiation Round) use a mix of different negotiation types in order to challenge participants’ differ-ent negotiation skills.
Another difference between the negotiation competitions is in the evaluation of team performance. In all competitions, judges are used to evaluate the results — often working in teams of two. However, in addition to that, only the Negotiation Challenge and the Warsaw Negotiation Round also use scoreable role-plays. In these competitions, the scoring criteria are typically disclosed to the negotiating parties at the beginning of the respec-tive round.
The criteria evaluators use can differ considerably. We found three main evaluation areas used in the different competitions:
• Preparation:for example, analysis of the problem, explication of one’s interests as well as the interests of one’s counterpart, and development of a negotiation or mediation strategy.
• Process for example, effective teamwork, listening skills, empathy, the ability to move toward a collaborative outcome without giving up one’s own commercial interests and needs, communication and negotiation skills, the ability to collaborate in order to find a solution, flexibility.
• Outcome: for example, value creation, value claiming, drafting of the joint contract, self-analysis, and ethical behavior.
We found that the various competitions use quite different combina-tions of these specificacombina-tions in their evaluation procedures. Some compe-titions have assigned special awards for specific skills, such as group work or value claiming.
Thus, although all the leading negotiation and mediation competitions are similar in that they involve students and have an educational focus, we find that they nonetheless differ considerably with regard to content and structure. In the following, we take a closer look at how the main benefits of negotiation competitions make them a unique tool for negotiation pedagogy.
Pedagogical Benefits of Negotiation Competitions
Negotiation competitions offer several pedagogical benefits to both the participating students and the academic community. These benefits can be grouped into three categories: skill development, networking, and promotion of negotiation as a field of study.
Skill Development
The purpose of competitions is to compare the relative skills of individu-als or teams trying to master a particular discipline. They thus play an inherently motivational role for contestants, which manifests itself in two ways. First, the contestants invest a significant amount of time and effort to prepare for the competitions. From our numerous conversations, we found that, although most of the teams typically start their preparations two to three months before the event, some prepare even up to six months before. In addition to taking negotiation courses offered at their institutions, these students usually prepare by thoroughly reviewing rel-evant literature and practice using various exercises, most typically role-play-based negotiations.
Second, we have found the level of motivation that contestants dem-onstrate during the competition, and the resulting intensity and quality of their negotiations, to be typically much higher than in the classroom setting. The individuals and teams participating in negotiation competitions can assess their performance, identify their strengths and weaknesses, and — above all — see how their negotiating styles work in a highly competi-tive context that mimics the real business and/or legal negotiations in which they can expect to participate in the future. This unique experience is difficult to simulate in the classroom. Although we have found students in negotiation courses to typically be highly motivated, adding a competitive aspect to negotiations seems to result in a qualitatively different experi-ence. We believe that reflecting on this experience will help participants further enhance and develop their negotiation skills.
Negotiation competitions also enable students and teachers to compare various negotiation approaches and styles used by students from different cultures, traditions, and diverse educational backgrounds. For instance, how do students with a highly emotional negotiating style perform in different negotiation settings, or when confronted with nego-tiators from other cultures? What happens when value-creating individuals negotiate with value-claiming counterparts? Such experiences are invalu-able for the participating students because they help them understand the “effect” of their personal negotiation style(s) in different settings and con-stellations. Such a variety of cultures and traditions would be difficult, if not impossible, to reproduce in classroom settings where negotiation styles are likely to be much more homogeneous because classmates are more likely to have been educated in the same tradition or represent the same (or similar) culture. (Even “foreign” students are likely to have adapted to the culture of their host institutions.)
Networking
Meeting and interacting with peers who share a passion for a particular topic can be, despite the competitive context, a fascinating and valuable
experience. The international nature of negotiation competitions offers participants exciting opportunities to network with colleagues from different institutions and countries.
Negotiation competitions also provide valuable networking opportu-nities for instructors. During the competitions, they can compare their way of teaching negotiation with other approaches and exchange views with other colleagues. We believe this combination of exposure to different views, opinions, and approaches, coupled with seeing these approaches embodied in the actual negotiation role-plays, can help instructors optimize their existing teaching approaches and methods and also encourage them to try new ones.
Promoting Negotiation
In some countries, negotiation is already an acknowledged and well-established research and study discipline, at least at the graduate level in law and business education. Unfortunately, in many countries this is not the case. Thus, such events as negotiation competitions create opportunities to raise awareness of this topic both in the academic community and among practitioners.
Because most student negotiation competitions are organized by aca-demics who are passionate about this topic, they often take place at their universities. This helps promote negotiation both as an academically inter-esting topic and as a key skill useful in private life and professional careers. It typically also increases students’ interest in attending negotiation courses, emphasizing the role of such courses in academic curricula, and helping secure the resources necessary for conducting negotiation research at the host institution.
Lessons Learned from Competition
The following observations arise from our experiences organizing and participating in international negotiation competitions.
Organizing and Conducting Negotiation Competitions
Our first, and very encouraging, observation regards the ever-increasing interest of the student community in participating in the negotiation com-petitions we have helped organize. Evidence includes the number of quali-fied applications, which has grown continuously in recent years and which has always exceeded the maximum number of teams that could be hosted by the organizers.2 This clearly indicates a qualified and growing demand for negotiation competitions. A drawback of this popularity, however, is that only a limited number of teams can be selected from a set of typically strong applicants. Even with clear and transparent evaluation criteria and admission processes, rejected candidates express disappointment.
A second important aspect of negotiation competitions is the postne-gotiation debriefing (Susskind and Corburn 2000).We consider the debriefing
to be an integral and important part of the negotiation teaching that enhances participants’ experiential learning.Debriefing gives participants a significant feedback that can help them understand and reflect on their behavior in the negotiations and thereby improve their negotiation skills.
In negotiation competitions, however, revealing the full details of the role-play simulation immediately after each round may (positively or nega-tively) affect the participants’ reputation and status within the group and influence their behavior in the following rounds. This rarely occurs in real business or legal negotiations, in which the attractiveness of the agreed outcome and integrity of the counterparts is perceived by the negotiator rather than being a hard fact supported by objective information. Given this, we substituted the debriefing sessions that had taken place after each round with sessions providing overall feedback from all the rounds at the end of the competition when the potential reputation effects could no longer influence the results of the competition anymore. One disadvantage of this, however, is that, at the end of the competition, it can be hard to remember everything about the negotiations, particularly those in the earlier rounds, with the result that some students might find it difficult to relate the feedback to their behavior. This can, in turn, reduce the learning effects. Although it would be ideal to align these conflicting effects, when making a trade-off between improving the pedagogical value of the competitions and preserving their realism, we tend to favor the latter.
Another issue that we have discussed intensively is the use of nonscore-able role-plays in negotiation competitions. On the one hand, evaluating the results of negotiations based on nonscoreable role-plays will always be somewhat subjective, particularly when several negotiations are carried out in parallel and when different judges — whose performance expectations and judging criteria may vary — are involved. On the other hand, the scope of scoreable role-plays is restricted and their evaluation always focuses on a substantial (measurable) outcome. Cross-evaluations of the relational outcome of the negotiation and the impact of the participants’ negotiation styles, such as Subjective Value Inventory (introduced in Curhan, Elfenbein, and Xu 2006) can be useful tools for integrating other dimensions, but they are subjective too, and can also be manipulated strategically by competitors. Moreover, it is difficult to find scoring systems that consider and measure negotiators’ creativity and their invention of options.
Initially, we gave priority to objectivity and fairness, and only used nonscoreable role-plays in the finals. In 2011, however, we started experi-menting with nonscoreable role-plays and have used them also in the qualification rounds since. Our experiences with these role-plays have been quite positive. We introduced multiple evaluation criteria and explained them to the teams prior to the negotiation round. To standardize their judging criteria as much as possible, all judges met before and after the negotiations, and jointly identified the best and worst performing team,
positioning all other teams in relation to them. Although using nonscore-able role-plays in negotiation competitions rather than scorenonscore-able ones requires more effort, participants have told us they appreciated the judges’ cooperative spirit, and we have received no complaints about the subjec-tivity and incomparability of the evaluations so far.
Organizers should also nurture the networking aspect of the compe-tition by offering participants opportunities to interact, for example, between the rounds or during evening events. Involving students in orga-nizing the competition can be helpful because they never forget to inte-grate suitable networking (social) opportunities into the schedule. We think, however, that the scientific and pedagogical part of the competitions should remain in the hands of academic faculty who should be responsible for selection and preparation (writing) of suitable role-plays; briefing, guiding, and debriefing the negotiation rounds; and evaluating their results.
Negotiations in Competitive Settings
Emotionalism
An important aspect of competitions is the high level of emotionalism that contestants often express. This phenomenon, which various scholars have frequently observed (Ogilvie and Carsky 2002; Shapiro 2006; Druckman and Olekalns 2008; Honeyman, Coben, and De Palo 2009b), seems to be common in competitive settings. Raised voices, excited gestures, clear signs of satisfaction with the obtained result, or expressions of deep disappoint-ment, frustration, anger, and even tears are integral elements of negotiation competitions. We are constantly astonished at how much more intense emotions are during the competitions compared with simulations that typically take place in classes and executive seminars.
As organizers, we have sometimes even found ourselves watching highly emotional negotiations during the competitions and hoping that they do not escalate beyond control. This happened once during a nego-tiation between teams from France and South America. As we entered the room, the negotiators were standing at the whiteboard literally shouting at each other. As time ran out and the judge began to count down, the situation seemed to escalate. But despite the highly charged emotional atmosphere, the teams were able to reach agreement at the very last second, after which, to our surprise, they laughed and hugged.
This highly emotional approach seems to have a positive effect on the relational outcome. Indeed, we also observed that the above-mentioned teams were both popular with other participants. We suspect, however, that this will apply as long as the emotions do not become too negative and the negotiating style too confrontational and aggressive. We have also found that even teams with widely divergent cultural backgrounds were able to understand and accommodate highly emotional approaches quite well.
We add, however, that highly emotional teams generally had poorer outcomes — at least in the competitions we have observed. We think this is because emotionalism is rather time-consuming and such teams often ran out of time. Although the emotional teams tend to perform quite well in the overall rankings, so far they have not made it to the finals, which have typically featured relatively less emotionally expressive, problem-focused teams. The style of the final rounds has always been calm and relatively quiet.
Reputation
We have repeatedly been surprised at how quickly teams can acquire reputations for their level of integrity and fairness throughout the compe-tition (Glick and Croson 2001). The spectrum of negotiation approaches, attitudes, strategies, and tactics demonstrated by the contestants is typically broad, but unknown before the first negotiation rounds commence. Although some teams conduct a principle-based negotiation, consistently demonstrating a “win-win” attitude, others choose to pursue a more Machia-vellian approach, and focus on winning by all means. In particular, negotia-tion exercises based on the prisoner’s dilemma (similar to such simulanegotia-tions as “Win as Much as You Can” or “Oil Pricing”3) offer an excellent opportu-nity to observe how contestants build a reputation. A team’s positive (trust, trustworthiness, fairness, and cooperation) and negative behaviors (mis-trust, untrustworthiness, unfairness, and defection) quickly build that team’s reputation, and word spreads rapidly among the small community of com-petition participants. Negative reputations seem to be stronger and more persistent and carry more weight than positive ones, because participants who feel cheated by their negotiation partners inform other teams about it and warn them not to repeat their own mistakes.
We have also observed behaviors that confirm that fairness is a relative concept, which negotiators typically interpret subjectively and often use strategically in their negotiations (Loewenstein, Thompson, and Bazerman 1989). We note, however, an unpredictable relationship between having a reputation as a tough negotiator and receiving sympathy among one’s counterparts. In fact, we often observed contestants who were perceived as tough negotiators but were still liked by the group. In each case, despite their toughness at the negotiating table, they appeared friendly and authentic in their social interactions.
In contrast, teams that behaved arrogantly and suggested that their negotiation approach and sense of fairness were superior to the approaches of other teams are often disliked and treated with reservation. In one negotiation competition, we observed a situation in which Negotiator A in a three-party coalition insisted on excluding one of her negotiation partners (Negotiator B) as a punishment for his unfair behavior in one of the previous rounds. Interestingly, however, Negotiator C perceived this
exclusion to be unfair and refused to go along with it. After a long and heated debate, Negotiator C decided it would be better to form a coalition with Negotiator B, despite the fact that he may have behaved unfairly in the past, rather than with Negotiator A, who had tried to impose her perception of fairness on him. Thus, the negotiation ended by excluding Negotiator A from further coalition negotiations.
To avoid spreading reputations, some negotiation competitions explic-itly forbid teams from discussing their negotiation experiences with other contestants. In our view, however, this rule denies reality because it restricts interpersonal information flows that, outside the competition setting, cannot be stopped. Reputation is an integral part of repeated negotiations, and observing its mechanics is a valuable exercise.
Negotiation Styles
Our most puzzling observation concerns the application of principle-based (or interest-based) negotiation principles in a competitive environment. In general, achieving a Pareto-efficient result in even the simplest possible negotiation situation with value-creation opportunities (more than one issue and different preferences regarding the issues) requires the exchange of sensitive information concerning parties’ interests and preferences. If this approach is taken by both parties, it can often lead to systematic value creation. Our experience from negotiation competitions, however, seems to confirm the claim made by Roy Lewicki, Alexander Hiam, and Karen Wise Olander (1996) that, if a cooperative, principle-based negotiator meets a competitive hard bargainer, the latter is more likely to obtain a better substantial result, at least if the cooperative negotiator is unable to change negotiating tactics accordingly.
In a typical example of this, we observed a team using a principle-based negotiation approach, but in a naïve way, by uncritically trusting their counterparts and openly and truthfully disclosing their interests and key information concerning the reservation points. Their counterparts said little, and, while not lying explicitly, neither did they try to correct the other party’s false assumptions. The result was that the less cooperative party ended up with the majority of the jointly created value and obtained the best result in the negotiation round. The main lesson from this is that, while interest-based negotiation can help achieve Pareto-efficient results, it can also create risks when the other party employs a competitive approach focused solely on value-claiming. Negotiators should be careful when dis-closing information and try to determine the trustworthiness of their coun-terparts before deciding whether or not to share sensitive information with them.
In our experience, the most effective skill for achieving consistently excellent performance in negotiation competitions is the ability both to recognize the characteristics of the negotiation situation and the attitude of
negotiation partners and to efficiently apply the methods and techniques that optimize performance in such settings. This skill might be called
strategic adaptabilityornegotiation intelligence. Those teams that end up at the top of the rankings in negotiation competitions are not only impres-sive value creators but can also bargain hard when the situation requires it. They can create trust and build relationships but still get a good deal, even if it turns out to be impossible to establish a rapport.
Interestingly, these teams are often not the best value creators nor the best value claimers (hard bargainers) among the participants, but they do have the most versatile set of negotiation skills and the experience and/or intuition to use the right methods at the right time. This allows them to perform well in the wide spectrum of negotiation situations that contes-tants typically encounter in negotiation competitions. Thus, skill develop-ment is a critical eledevelop-ment of negotiation competitions. Organizers of such competitions should therefore ensure that participants compete in a wide variety of negotiation settings, for example, with two or more parties, distributive as well as integrative, and scoreable and nonscoreable.
Last but not least, as in business school case study contests (Dunham 2003), participation in negotiation competitions seems to have a positive effect on participants’ career prospects. One participant who had asked for a letter of reference told us that participation in an international negotiation competition was one of the main reasons she was offered an internship working for the European Union.
Outlook for Negotiation Competitions
The increasing number of applicants means that current demand cannot be met by existing competitions. Moreover, the pool of potential applicants is largely untapped because many students are simply unaware that such competitions exist, especially students from disciplines other than law and business, such as sociology, education, political science, and even the natural sciences. Consequently, we see room for new initiatives.
We encourage universities with an established negotiation faculty to organize their own, internal competitions, the winners of which could then participate in international competitions. In many countries outside the U.S., negotiation training is still not well developed and needs to be pro-moted — negotiation competitions can help fulfill that important role.
International negotiation competitions reflect the wider pedagogical trend of moving beyond the classroom toward more experiential educa-tion. This gives students the opportunity to experience different cultures and develop their own personal networks — which can help them better function in a globalized world. In addition, events such as negotiation competitions spur students’ interests in the topic and make their educa-tions measurably more enjoyable. A next step could be to create a forum or association to link the different competitions with each other. Such an
organization could provide a useful platform for exchanging experiences, coordinating activities, and establishing common standards. Eventually, it might even be possible to create some kind of world championship, sup-ported by the various “local” competitions.
Finally, negotiation competitions are also fertile areas for researchers who could investigate the specific conditions of negotiation competitions and compare them with the classroom experience and/or results from the field. Such research would give scholars a deeper understanding of the effects of a competitive, albeit still somewhat artificial, setting on negotia-tion behavior. Internanegotia-tional negotianegotia-tion competinegotia-tions also provide an almost ideal setting for the investigation of intercultural team negotiations. The particular advantage here is the teams’ high levels of commitment, combined with the fact that the negotiations can be fully observed and easily complemented with additional questionnaires or interviews.
Conclusion
Our goal here has been to describe the various benefits that negotiation competitions offer for negotiation pedagogy. These include the participants’ high levels of commitment and the intensity of the experience, neither of which can be equaled in classroom settings; the opportunity to experience authentic cultural differences; the great networking opportunities for stu-dents and faculty; and the very effective promotion of negotiation as a field of study. Moreover, we think that negotiation competitions offer useful research opportunities. Clearly, negotiation competitions are a perfect complement to classroom teaching with great potential for development.
NOTES
1. For practical reasons, in this article, we mostly use the term “negotiation competitions,” but we acknowledge that several competitions also have an element of, or focus on, mediation.
2. In the negotiation competitions we have organized, the ratio of applications to participants was up to almost 9 to 1.
3. “Win as Much as You Can” and “Oil Pricing”, are negotiation role-play simulations available from the Program on Negotiation Clearinghouse at http://www.pon.harvard.edu/shop/home/.
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