The negotiation process changes significantly when there are multiple parties involved. Multiparty negotiation is one where there are more than two parties that are working together to achieve a collective objective.
Multiparty negotiations differ from two party deliberations in several important ways: Number of parties, informational and computational complexity, social complexity, procedural complexity and strategic complexity.
Multiparty negotiation looks a lot like group decision-making because it involves a group of parties trying to reach a common solution in a situation were the parties preferences may diverge.
There are three key stages that characterize multilateral negotiations: prenegotiation, actual negotiation and managing the agreement.
In multiparty negotiations groups must generate many ideas and approaches to a problem, which usually creates conflict.
When done well conflict is a natural part of these relationships when done poorly, conflict actively disrupts all these processes.
In addition to monitoring the discussion norms and managing the conflict processes effectively the parties also need to manage the decision rules, the way the group will decide what to do.
Finally, if the objective is consensus or the best quality solution, negotiators should not strive to achieve it all at once. Rather, they should strive for a first agreement that can be revised, upgraded and improved.
In summary, if these issues are raised and thoughtfully considered the parties involved are more likely to feel better about the process and to arrive at an effective outcome than if these factors are left to chance.
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