Dispute Resolution Research Center, Kellogg School of Management

DRRC's version of Alpha Beta is a cross-cultural, team-on-team negotiation of a potential alliance. The exercise requires the two parties to enact a cultural style during the negotiation.

Preparation: 30 minutes
Negotiation: 60 minutes

At Your Service
Authors: Jeanne M. Brett & Michele Gelfand
Source: DRRC

This is an exercise that can be used to teach integrative negotiation skills in the context of deal making or dispute resolution. The exercise was intended for undergraduates; however, it may be used with more advanced students especially to illustrate: 1) the differences between negotiating deals versus disputes, and 2) negotiating as a solo and negotiating as a team in the deal making/dispute resolution context. It can also be used to illustrate how culture interacts with negotiation context.

Preparation: 15-20 minutes
Negotiation: 30 minutes
Debrief: 60 minutes

Blue Buggy
Author: Gaylen D. Paulson
Source: DRRC

This is a two-party deal making exercise with a negative bargaining zone. Nevertheless 15% - 20% of negotiators reach agreement illustrating irrationality and agreement biases. Another 15% - 20% generate creative agreements that illustrate the limitations of the frames and assumptions negotiators bring to the table.

Preparation: 10 minutes
Negotiation: 15 minutes

Buying a House
Author: Sally Blount
Source: DRRC

Buying a House is a two-party, quantified distributive negotiation with a $10,000 overlapping bargaining range. It can be used to teach pure distributive negotiations and the use of comparative standards.

Preparation: 15 minutes
Negotiation: 20 minutes

Coffee Contract
Authors: Tony Simons & Thomas Tripp
Source: DRRC

Coffee Contract is a distributive exercise. It concerns the contract for coffee at the Cornell Hotel School. The exercise provides a good context for teaching fundamental negotiation concepts like bargaining zone, reservation prices, BATNAs, as well as distributive negotiation tactics, openings, concession making, and threats. Creative students may build in some integrative elements, and even if the students fail to find these creative ideas, the instructor can use them to introduce integrative negotiations.

Preparation: 15 minutes
Negotiation: 30 minutes

College Town Apartments
Author: Leigh Thompson
Source: DRRC

This is a qualitative exercise. The dispute is between two college roommates concerning the timely payment of rent. The exercise has a large variety and range of mutually acceptable outcomes. It involves perceptual differences regarding one's own behavior as well as the other party's. Since the two parties live together and share common interests, relational, emotional, and social issues also factor into the resolution.

Preparation: 45 minutes
Negotiation: 60 minutes

Eazy’s Garage
Authors: Bruce M. Patton
Source: Harvard Program on Negotiation (PON), DRRC version

DRRC's version of Eazy's Garage is a two-party, qualitative, dispute resolution exercise with some limited opportunities for integrative potential. In Eazy’s Garage, the parties, a dentist and a garage station owner, are in a dispute over a repair bill. The exercise can be used to teach concepts of interests, rights, and power, but the teaching notes do not present that approach.

Preparation: 10 minutes
Negotiation: 60 minutes

New Car
Authors: Janice Nadler, Leigh Thompson & Michael Morris
Source: DRRC

This two-party, multi-issue negotiation between a buyer and a seller for a Plymouth Takeover challenges students' integrative and distributive negotiation skills. Participants are randomly assigned to the buyer and seller roles and are provided with information about the various issues, options, and alternatives (e.g., color, financing, warranty, extras, etc.). The goal of each negotiator is to maximize his or her profits. In the negotiation, eight issues are of concern, four of which are variable-sum issues. Following the negotiation, participants may be asked to complete a questionnaire asking each negotiator to: 1) estimate the other party's payoff schedule, and 2) answer questions regarding their perceptions of their own and the other party's behavior, attitudes, and interests.

Preparation: 15-20 minutes
Negotiation: 30-45 minutes

New Recruit
Author: Margaret A. Neale
Source: DRRC

This is a two-party, multi-issue, quantified negotiation over an employment contract. The exercise illustrates Pareto optimality and the differences between compatible, trade-off or integrative, and distributive issues.

Preparation: 15 minutes
Negotiation: 30 minutes

Outside Offer
Author: William Maddux
Source: DRRC

Outside Offer is a two-party, multi-issue negotiation with distributive and integrative elements. It is designed to be used as a second round of negotiation following the New Recruit negotiation exercise. The exercise’s purpose is to give students the experience of a multi-round negotiation. It can be used to teach how previous negotiation history and interpersonal capital (in the form of trust or rapport established in the initial negotiation) can affect the dynamics of subsequent negotiations. Included in the Outside Offer folder is a version of New Recruit that alerts the students that there will be a second round negotiation. If you are going to use the Outside Offer exercise, you should use this version of New Recruit. Note that unlike New Recruit, the issues in Outside Offer are not quantified, although an instructor may wish to make doing so part of the exercise. A 1-3 week gap between New Recruit and Outside Offer is recommended.

Preparation: 30-45 minutes, more if students are required to generate a scoring sheet.
Negotiation: 30-45 minutes
Debrief: 45-60 minutes.

Performance Interview
Author: Leonard Greenhalgh
Source: Creative Consensus, Inc.

This two-party simulation involves an interaction between a boss and a subordinate. The simulation evokes participants' normal styles of dealing with an interpersonal problem, whether to directly or indirectly address the problem or avoid dealing with it.

Preparation: 30 minutes
Meeting: 30 minutes

Quickstop Mall
Author: Lynn P. Cohn
Source: DRRC

Quickstop Mall is a mediation simulation that presents the challenge of a dispute that does not lend itself to an economic resolution. The mediator must focus on interest-based solutions and lead the parties to recognize and respect each other’s interests. This exercise is ideal for the mediation or negotiation instructor trying to encourage students to acknowledge emotions and identify key needs and interests and to discourage them from quickly seeking a financial settlement.

Preparation: 15 minutes
Negotiation: 60-90 minutes
Debrief: 60 minutes

Rooftop Deck
Authors: Vanessa Seiden & Jason Seiden
Source: DRRC

This is a decision that must be made jointly between three interdependent condominium owners. It can be used to teach interests, rights, and power. As not all parties have the same information, it is also useful to teach the value of searching for unique information.

Preparation: 60 minutes
Negotiation: 60 minutes

Santara vs. Kessel
Author: Stephen B. Goldberg
Source: DRRC

Santara and Kessel are partners in a catering business. They have been unable to resolve their differences and have agreed to meet with a neutral mediator. A third party mediator is at the table trying to facilitate a resolution.

Preparation: 30 minutes
Negotiation: 60 minutes

Squabbling Authors
Author: Katheryn M. Dutenhaver
Source: DRRC

Two anthropologists have finished a book manuscript and are having trouble deciding whose name should go first. Squabbling Authors can be used as a mediation exercise or it can be used to demonstrate the difference between mediation and arbitration.

Preparation: 5 minutes
Arbitration: 10-15 minutes
Mediation: 15-20 minutes

STAR
Author: Stephen B. Goldberg
Source: DRRC

This is a two-party, qualitative negotiation with integrative potential. The negotiation occurs between representatives of two record companies and is about which company will produce the first new record of a once popular rock group that has reunited after 13 years apart.

Preparation: 60 minutes
Negotiation: 90 minutes

Stopwatch
Author: Don Moore
Source: DRRC

Stopwatch is a two-party, multi-issue negotiation with integrative potential set in the context of a buyer-seller transaction. Its main lesson surrounds the understanding and strategic disclosure of deadlines in negotiation.

Preparation: 30 minutes
Negotiation: 30 minutes
Debrief: 60 minutes

Student Project
Author: Leigh Thompson
Source: DRRC

This is a two-party, integrative negotiation concerning a class project organized between two students. Each person plays the role of a student assigned to work on a class project with another student. Together the students must reach an agreement about what they will do and how they will complete the project. Students are given a list of issues they must work out concerning the project, e.g., topic to study, type of project, work schedule, method of presentation, etc. The goal is to work out the terms of the project with the other student in a way that maximizes each student's objectives.

Preparation: 15-20 minutes
Negotiation: 30-45 minutes

Sugar Bowl
Author: Gaylen D. Paulson
Source: DRRC

Sugar Bowl is a fun and compact introductory exercise originally designed for use in short negotiation seminars or workshops. The exercise presents a very approachable negotiating context, and one that persons are likely to feel is relevant to their own experiences. The key to the exercise is a relatively generous positive bargaining zone that often leaves both sides initially feeling successful, but later realizing they might have gotten a better distributive outcome (and thereby making them more receptive to course material). In a very short space of time, issues are raised related to aspirations, reservation prices, alternatives, bargaining zones, and tactics for effective value claiming

Preparation: 5 minutes
Negotiation: 5-10 minutes
Debrief: 15-20 minutes

Vacation Plans
Authors: Leigh Thompson & Terri DeHarpport
Source: DRRC

This is a two-party negotiation in which participants plan a vacation together. The negotiators are long time friends who nevertheless have very different preferences concerning how to spend the vacation. Integrative solutions are possible, in which participants maximize their joint gain by logrolling and identifying compatible interests.

Negotiation: 25 minutes

Virtual Victorian
Authors: Wendi Adair, Gaylen D. Paulson & W. Trexler Proffitt, Jr.
Source: DRRC

Virtual Victorian is a distributive, house buying negotiation that is carried out through agents and via email. There are four parties: the buyer, the buyer's agent, the seller, and the seller's agent.

Preparation: 60 minutes
Negotiation: one week (email)

Where’s Alvin? A Case of Lost Ethics
Authors: Margaret Calonico, Robert Inchausti & Holly A. Schroth
Source: DRRC

Where's Alvin is a two-party negotiation between a manager and an employee that poses an ethical problem. The employee has stolen company property. The manager has some culpability in that he/she did not follow company policy regarding security checks in hiring the employee. As a further complication, the manager and employee are, or at least were, friends.

Preparation: 20 minutes
Negotiation: 60 minutes