This chapter provides a brief description of the negotiation process and its nature, and explores its advantages and disadvantages. It also explains the reasons for the appropriateness of this process in comparison to other means of dispute settlement, such as mediation and arbitration, and argues that it is an everyday necessary component for the logistics service providers.
TopThe Negotiation Process
This section conceptualizes term ‘negotiation’ and focuses on its essential components and the phases it entails. Moreover, it explores the key factors for a successful negotiation, and proposes ways to ameliorate the negotiation process.
The term ‘negotiation’ has received numerous definitions, given that its use is multidisciplinary (international relations, business etc.). A brief literature review can testify the variety of the existing definitions attributed to the term. More specifically and for the sake of logistic services, a negotiation can be defined as ‘a joint decision-making process, through which negotiating parties accommodate their conflicting interests into a mutually acceptable settlement’ (Faure and Sjöstedt, 1993). Although this definition is indicatory, it discloses a substantive feature of the term: that is, a negotiation is a process. Moreover, most of the definitions provided acknowledge too the process character of negotiations (Bercovitch & Jackson, 1997; Rojot, 1991; Donohue, 1981). A process involves a sequence of non-predetermined actions between the parties, which means that one party’s proposal determines the other party’s counter-proposal. A negotiation’s outcome as such is highly interactive and unpredictable (Arnold, 1987). It follows that the negotiation process is not standardized and it does not correspond to any kind of typology. Generally speaking, the lack of typology distinguishes a process from a procedure; the latter is a step by step approach with little prospect of deviation.
Apparently, the negotiation process is dynamic, since it depends on a set of various parameters. In this context, it is critical to specify the elements of a negotiation, in order to shed light on the term.