Roger Fisher and William Ury

Roger Fisher and William Ury, in Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In, examine the differences between positional bargaining and principled bargaining, favoring the latter over the former in all cases in which the required extra effort is worth it. The authors say that "in virtually every case, the outcome will be better for both sides with principled negotiation" (Fisher and Ury, 1991, 151). If there is something worth bargaining about, say the authors, then it is worth the effort to use the basic approach of principled negotiations. Positional bargaining is essentially based on the "positions" of the two negotiators, so that the result is a confrontational encounter in which negotiations only solidify the opposing positions and leads to tricks, power plays, distrust, etc. There are two types of positional bargaining, soft and hard, and both have serious drawbacks which prevent the best result for both parties. Principled negotiations, on the other hand, give the negotiators the chance to avoid those drawbacks by accomplishing four goals:

Separate the people from the problem. Focus on interests, not positions. Generate a variety of possibilities before deciding what to do. Insist that the result be based on some objective standard (Fisher and Ury, 1991, 10-11).

Each of these points makes it more likely that a result will occur which will be the best available one for both parties.

The authors list five basic considerations in deciding the worth o

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"shared interests" rather than separate positions. 3. BANTA, or the Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement, has to do with what the bargainer can do if he is in a weak position compared to the other side. Obviously, if one side is holding the best cards, there will be less motivation for that side to meet the other party half way, to deal with shared interests rather than positions, etc. The BANTA is important because it helps the negotiator make the best of a bad situation, allowing the weak-positioned bargainer to accomplish two important goals: to protect you against making an agreement you should reject, and second, to help you make the most of the assets�you do have so that any agreement you reach will satisfy your interests as well as possible (Fisher and Ury, 1991, 97). When the bargainer finds and keeps his BANTA in mind, it will protect [him] both from accepting terms that are too unfavorable and from rejecting terms it would be in [his] attempt to accept" (Fisher and Ury, 1991, 100). Like the authors' other tools, the BANTA keeps in the negotiator's mind the big picture, keeping him from too quickly accepting a solution to the conflicts of bargaining, reminding him that he will probably not get everything he d

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