Negotiation is an artful skill. Everyone has to develop this skill because all of us daily face the innumerable crises. It is a rational technique and it can be improved to solve our daily problems to create a peaceful atmosphere. Therefore, to achieve a peace in world, we need to aware people around the world that through negotiation technique we can able to lessen an intensity of conflict if not solve it completely.
In The Fundamentals of Negotiating, Nierenberg has tried to define negotiation as follows:
“Negotiation depends on communication…negotiation can be considered an element of human behaviour…dealt with by both the traditional and the new behavioural sciences, from history, jurisprudence, economics, sociology and psychology to cybernetics, general semantic, game and decision-making theory and general semantics…the full scope of negotiation is too broad to be confined to one or even a group of the existing behavioural sciences”.
Negotiation is a process in which explicit proposals are put forward ostensibly for the purpose of reaching agreement on an exchanging or on the realization of a common interest whose conflicting interests are present’.
Michael Nicholson attempt a subtle distinction between bargaining and negotiation: ‘The activity whereby two contending parties decide between themselves what actions to take, when same are better for one than for the other, is called bargaining. When it is done by explicit verbal communication, we refer to it as negotiation’. The definitions for bargaining and negotiation from the Oxford English Dictionary. These tell us more about the bargaining process than the definition given above:
Bargain: An agreement between two parties settling how much each gives and takes, or what each performs and receives in a transaction between them. ‘The second blow makes the fray. The second word makes the bargaine - Francis Bacon. Of the colours of Good and Evil, 1597’.
Negotiation: To hold communication and conference (with another) for the purpose of arranging some matters by mutual agreement to discuss a matter with a view to some settlement or compromise. But Gandhi said, ‘All compromise is based on give and take, but there can be not give and take on fundamentals is a surrender. For it is all give and no take’. Negotiation is a process, which gives an opportunity to strengthen our moral and spiritual power to attempt to solve the fundamental problems of the human beings through bilateral negotiation.
DIPLOMATIC NEGOTIATION:
The purpose of negotiation of the diplomatic level, especially when two states representative meet each other to negotiate the conflicting issues as well as co-operative issues to strengthen the bond between two states. ‘The purpose of diplomatic negotiation is to obtain the acquiescence of another state (or states) in adjustments in relation that advance national interests and address national concerns’. An offer to negotiate need not imply willingness – still less eagerness – to settle the matter in dispute.
It may gain time or divert the attention of the other party while efforts are made to strengthen national power and lay a basis for prolonged defiance. It may serve to silence a government’s critics while building domestic and international political support for its bargaining position. It may give the politically useful appearance of doing something about a problem without actually having to address it.
When the other party sees much to lose and little to gain in reaching an agreement on the issue in dispute, it may be necessary to broaden the controversy or to create additional controversies that can be related to it. The purpose of doing this is to make the status quo no longer acceptable to the other party’. ‘The principle objective of a negotiation may be to overcome serious political differences that have precluded strategic co-operation between states rather than to resolve the issues in apparent dispute between them. When this is the objective, states may choose to resort to creative ambiguity or to a tacit’.
The basic difference between the purpose of diplomatic negotiation and individual negotiation is former take into consideration only the particular nations gain or sometime when they discuss on an element of co-operative issues, maximum they see the interest of only both parties with whom they are negotiating. But the purpose of individual’s negotiation process is endeavoring to minimize the suffering of the whole human beings. Individual negotiator sees unity in all and all in one. That’s why he thinks that if he tries his best to minimize the suffering of human beings, he will get satisfaction.
