Negotiation

Negotiation can be defined as the act of balancing conflicting interests in the business, legal, sociological and personal/emotional areas of human life. Using communication and strategy, two or more parties try to resolve their opposing requirements. A characteristic of negotiations, and a useful boundary for preventing proceedings from becoming out of hand, is the fact that, from the outset, both parties are usually willing to make concessions in order to reach a compromise that at least partially serves to satisfy their needs.

A negotiation takes place when two (bilateral negotiation) or more (polylateral negotiation) parties meet in order to settle their conflict of interests. Even though negotiation is a broad concept, you can find concrete examples of it when a difference of interest is resolved at the negotiation table, in court or, moving up the scale, with the use of weapons (warfare). A further example is a conflict fed by trademark rights (patents) or trade law sanctions (economic war).

This loose description covers many other elements of the negotiation process, beginning with choosing a partner (attractiveness, whether they can adequately provide for you, feeling emotionally close etc.) through to more fact-based disagreements between business partners, and ending in institutionalised negotiations in court or between authorities or institutes of public law (countries, states).