This document discusses the need for developing a new negotiation culture based on cooperation rather than competition. It argues that while competition and conflict are often seen as inherent to human nature based on notions of survival of the fittest, biology does not necessarily support this view. Studies show animals and primates regularly cooperate with each other, and that empathy, trust and conflict management are also part of human nature. The document advocates developing negotiation intelligence at both the individual and organizational levels to unlock the potential for joint value creation through cooperation and transformation of conflicts. Human resource managers are well-placed to foster such a new negotiation culture in organizations.

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2. A New
Negotiation
Culture
Prof Dr Katia Tieleman,Vlerick
1

3. The warlord

4. Fighting
our roots?
If these are our biological roots, is true human nature
and cooperation a doomed story?
Are conflict and violance simply in our genes, rendering
negotiation and conflict management useless?
Is cooperation only sustained by a thin layer of culture?

5. “Survival of the fittest”
Social Darwinism: life is a struggle in which those who
make it should not let themselves be dragged down by
those who don’t
Herbert Spencer (19th century) tanslated what he saw
as the laws of nature into business language, coining
the phrase: “survival of the fittest”
The book sold hundreds of thousands of copies

6. “And while the law (of competition) may be
sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for
the race, because it ensures the survival of
the fittest in every department”
Andrew Carnegie
(Scottish born American Industrialist
and Philanthropist. 1835-1919)

7. “If evolution and the survival of the fittest be true
at all, the destruction of prey and of human rivals
must have been among the most important. . . . It
is just because human bloodthirstiness is such a
primitive part of us that it is so hard to eradicate,
especially when a fight or a hunt is promised as
part of the fun.”
William James
(American philosopher & Psychologist, leader of the philosophical movement of
pragmatism, 1842-1910)

8. Ruthless competition becomes
a law of nature
Competition became a law of nature - the evolutionary
spirit became the adagio of business
We ambraced competition and the resulting conflict as
our chief organising business principle
Biology is called upon to justify/explain a society based
on selfish principles
The “homo economicus” is born

9. We established a very unproductive
negotiation environment
Belgian political negotiations
Union - labour negotiations
• Nobody can be trusted
• Negotiations are suboptimal - compromise
• Conflict is all around - the evidence is
striking

10. 85% of employees exposed to
conflict
2008 Study among 5000 employees in 9 countries (EU/Americas)
15%
Have to deal 29% Have to deal
56%
with conflict with conflict
always / frequently occasionally

11. Costs of conflict 2008 in terms of
employee time in the US alone
359 000 000 000 USD
Conservative
estimate!

12. Legal costs
• Nearly 90 % of US
companies engaged in
litigation (27 to 147 average
number of law suits at any
given moment)
• More concern about high
costs of litigation than about
winning
• Costs are very hard to
assess, but run up to 5 % of
company’s overall gross
revenues

13. Workplace consequences of
conflict witnessed
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30%
Personal insults & attacks
27%
Sickness & absence
25%
Cross-departmental conflict
18%
Bullying
18%
People left organisation
18%
People fired
16%
Employees moved to other departments
13%
Project failures
9%

14. 70% see managing conflict a critically important
leadership skill - how do managers do?
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Managers Employees
Managers handle conflict well
Managers do not handle conflict as well as they should

15. Cost of conflict
Unresolved conflict and
ineffective cooperation represent
the largest reducible cost in many
businesses

16. Effects of unresolved conflict
• First order effects
• missed deadlines, termination costs,
recruitment expenses
• Second order effects
• missed opportunities, increased
supervision

17. Is it really
nature?
Biology is often a justification
Every debate abour society and governments makes huge
assumptions about human nature, which are presented as
if they came from biology. But they almost never do (Frans
De Waal)
Assumptions about biology
are always on the negative side

18. Youtube: monkey
cooperation & fairness

19. Our inner ape is not nearly a nasty as
advertised: the apes trust each other!
Biologists (the only ones with comparative material)
conclude that we are group animals: “highly
cooperative, sensitive to injustice, sometimes
warmongering, but mostly peace loving”
Empathy and cooperation come naturally to our species
- if you give food to a group of chimpanzees, within 20
min. everybody will have some food. Many animals
survive not by eliminating each other of keeping
everything for themselves, but by cooperating
Biologist plee to overhaul assumptions about human
nature that turns out to be a projection.
Competition is obviously part of the picture, but 95 % of
the time the creatures that represent our biological
roots are cooperating
Violence is in our genes, but so are reconcilliation and
conflict management

20. There is as much cooperation
and trust as competition in
nature
It is not nature holding us back
How do we nurture the
cooperation?

21. We need to develop our
NQ (Negotiation Intelligence)
As we evolve from
Shareholder to stakeholder capitalism
‣ Sustainable companies manage to reconcile these interests
Market to Society
‣ In the market, consumer organisations, NGOs, governements
etc. play a role
‣ Leadership will be conditional upon consensus building
capacity
‣ NQ becomes increasingly important

22. The logic of
NQ (Negotiation Intelligence)
• The logic of rational choice
• The logic of appropriateness
• The logic of transformation
• Cooperation is more then a selfish cost/benefit analysis based on a
set of fixed utility functions (preferences) or an adherence to
appropriatness (norms and emotions)
• Cooperation is increasingly about the co-creation of joint
opportunities, about turning confrontation into cooperation
• WE NEED A LOGIC OF TRANSFORMATION TO DEVELOP A NEW
NEGOTIATION CULTURE

23. The model of
NQ (Negotiation Intelligence)
Unlocking fixed potential Knowledge
Unlocking fixed value
Skills
Unlocking the safety kit
Attitude
Masterkey

24. From individual
to organisation
We also need Corporate Negotiation Intelligence (CCQ)
Given the bottom line impact of our negotiation behaviour, we
need to develop a systemic approach rather than a case by case ad
hoc approach - often leading to champagne at the signing of a
deal, but bitterness after
Recent studies show that, even during the economic crisis,
companies with a high negotiation majurity performed much beter
than the avarge (a decline with more than 30 % versus an increase
of 42,5 %)

25. From individual
to organisation

26. We are currently designing a construction plan for
CNQ
Some building blocks include:
• Key negotiators trained and aware (no one-off event)
• Optimised negotiation processes
• Cross-stakeholder collaboration (including the implementers and the
overall strategy designers)
• Approval and escalation system (mandate)
• Measurement of negotiation success
• Common negotiation standards (corporate playbook)
• Knowledge sharing system

27. Towards a
new negotiation culture
If we want to move from improved negotiation
compententies to a new negotiation culture, we
need to work on:
• Individual NQ
• ONQ

28. Mission for HR managers?
• Only 20-30 % of HR managers reports that
they are strategically involved
• Yet, HR managers are strategically well
placed to foster a new negotiation culture
based on Negotiation Intelligence

29. Thank you
for your
attention!
Prof Dr Katia Tieleman,Vlerick

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