PRE-NEGOTIATION ANALYSIS – ADAM BAXTER (1983)
This is the second part of your two-part series of negotiations. Your team has been assigned the role of a senior personnel officer at the Adam Baxter Company. Before each negotiation you will meet remotely with your team members in order to prepare a strategy for the negotiation. The only information that you can use to prepare for the case is the one given in the case itself and the results your obtained in your previous negotiation. You cannot do additional research on the internet or use additional references.
For this negotiation, use your agreed upon terms in the previous one and disregard the agreements that are listed in this second case. If there are agreements mentioned in the case that you did not negotiate, then use those items, for this exercise (but do not change the agreements that you previously reached). Before you meet with your team members to prepare your strategy, you shall read the Adam Baxter case (1983) and carry out the following analysis:
a) What do you think are the other side’s interests, resistance points, and targets?
b) According to the information that you have, what do you think is the other party’s BATNA?
c) What is your BATNA? How do you expect to leverage it and what are the possible consequences of pursuing it rather than reaching an agreement on the negotiation table?
d) Do a thorough analysis of the company’s financial statements. What is the company’s financial position going into the negotiation? How has the company’s financial situation changed from the previous negotiation? How do you expect to use this information during the negotiation?
e) How did the previous negotiation change the relationship that you have with your counterpart? How much are you willing to strain the relationship in order to obtain what you want?
f) Quantify and prioritize the relative importance of each of the items that you will be negotiating. If possible, assign points to each one of them. Identify your resistance point, your aspiration, and define what will be your initial offer for each one of those items. Will you negotiate the items individually, as a package, and what trades are you willing to carry out?
g) Define as detailed as possible the strategy and tactics that you will use during the negotiation. Your analysis has to be based on the theory that has been covered in class.
Once you finish the above-mentioned analysis, you shall meet remotely with your team members in order to define the following:
i) Will there be one speaker or will all three take an active role in the discussion?
ii) How will within-team decisions be made during the negotiation? What will you do if not all of the team members agree?
iii) Unify the individual strategies and tactics that each one of you prepared into one single joint action plan for the negotiation.
Each one of you shall play the same role that you played in the previous negotiation.
