Negotiation is a vital skill for every manager. As a result, there are almost as many 'patented' techniques for negotiation as there are managers, each proclaiming to be the definitive route to success. The authors behind these techniques keep their work very much to themselves. Their fundamentally different approaches to negotiation remain in isolation from each other, as if their authors were too polite to contradict others in the field. In most cases, when you are developing your negotiation skills, this leaves you with a stark choice: pick a single technique and ignore the rest. Until now ... Kennedy on Negotiation is an authoritative and comprehensive guide to negotiation skills training and practice. Dr Kennedy uses the well-established 'Four Phases' model as the structure around which he critiques constructively the numerous competing theories and models. Gavin Kennedy's book is everything you would expect from one of the most respected writers on negotiation. It is a readable and reliable guide to all that is best in the various contributions to negotiation training from authors such as John Nash, Walton and McKersie, Atkinson, Nierenberg, Rubin and Brown, Gottschalk, Karass, Fisher and Ury, and many more, including Gavin Kennedy himself.

Contents: Prologue: Negotiation; Decision making; What is negotiation?; Haggling and horse trading; Promises; Nobody ever saw two dogs negotiate over a bone; Interests and charity; Nash and the bargaining problem; The real problem with bargaining; The benefits of bargaining. Dialogue: Negotiation as a Phased Process; Models of negotiation; Douglas's three phase model; Gulliver's eight phases; Kennedy's eight-step model; Two modifications; Phase One - Preparing to Negotiate; Time to prepare; What is this negotiation about?; What are your interests?; What are the negotiable issues?; What are your priorities?; What are your negotiating ranges?; The negotiator's surplus; Tradables; The extended Negotek® PREP Planner; Introducing power into preparation; What is power?; Dependency and commitment; Atkinson on power; Preparing the management agenda; Phase Two - Debating Face to Face; Debate; Behaving badly; Manipulative ploys; Streetwise?; Power ploys; Verbal ploys; Destructive argument behaviour; Effective behaviour; The language of negotiation; The art of questioning; Constructive debate behaviour; Phase Three - Proposing and Bargaining Face to Face; How important is personality in negotiating?; The personality styles of negotiators; Psychology and negotiating personalities; A trainer on personalities; Prisonner's dilemma games; The prime colours of negotiation; Results versus relationships; The purple principle of conditionality; The myths of conceding behaviour; Proposing and bargaining ploys; Go-betweens and red bargainers; Red bargainers in insurance; Red bargainers in buying; Red bargainers in business; The law and red bargainers; Difficult negotiators; Power in proposing and bargaining; Applying Atkinson's power assessment method; Closing the bargaining phase; Bargaining closes; Agreement; Rational Negotiation?; The lure of rationality; Common negotiating errors; Simon's simple model; Principled negotiation; The prescriptions of principled negotiation; Rising above principle?; The negotiator as mediator. Epilogue: A practitioner's research agenda?; A perfect negotiation? Appendices: Select bibliography of work referred to in the text; Exercise on conditionality; Practice examination; Case study; Essay questions; Notes; Index.