The authority conflict is the starting point that defines successful negotiations. Without this conflict, the negotiation does not begin. Those that disregard the importance of this stage are always re-opening negotiations without being able to stabilize their roles in it.
The purpose of the negotiation context is to produce an evolution conflict that allows building a complementation.
The active function to produce this evolution conflict is the existence of an authority conflict that is necessary to define the “value” of the parts involved in a negotiation.
After the authoritative role of the parts has been accepted an involution conflict begins. In this involution conflict each part tries to prevail over the other one and finally, the evolution conflict solving is possible after the need to “degrade” the opponent has finished and both parts accept their mutual values.
The negotiating attitude is what allows starting a negotiation by facing an authority conflict, followed by the need to avoid the involution produced by an involution conflict and ending with the building of a complementation that is implicit in an evolution conflict.
To deal with the nature of negotiations it is necessary to clarify the nature of conflicts that underlies.
It can be said that there are four basic conflicts between humans:
1) Evolution conflicts: These are complementation conflicts that result from the mutual difference between the parts.
2) Involution conflicts: These are the conflicts that result from the supplementation of the colliding strengths between the parts.
3) Authority conflicts: They result from the need of the parts to prevail in some field.
4) Absence of conflict: This is the consequence of needing to avoid conflicts because their consequences cannot be faced.
When the purpose to be achieved in a negotiation is clear, the authority role has to be the first main concern so as to be able to play an authoritative role in the negotiation.
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*Based on an excerpt from the book “Unicist Object Driven Negotiation” by Peter Belohlavek.