Negotiation Skills - Concrete Experience

Kathmandu University School of Management

Individual Assignment (Reflective Diary)

Experiential Learning – II

Submitted by:

Bijay Timilsina (17337)

MBA, IV Term

Submitted to:

Mr. Arun Basnet

Faculty, Negotiation Skills

May 19, 2018

Concrete Experience

        We gained much insight about how fruitful negotiations are conducted and how we can be in a win-win situation in negotiation. We studied about different techniques and strategies to be incorporated into our negotiation table. At the end of the trimester, each group was assigned a case in which they were to prepare a role play of about thirty minutes by making use of the theories studied throughout the course study. My group was assigned with the business dispute case of two retail giants: Starbucks and Kraft Foods Incorporation.

        We were much concerned on how business negotiations were conducted because we are business students. We were happy to have the case assigned to our group. We had heard of many business disputes in national as well international scenario. However, we were not directly involved in knowing and exploring the frontiers of business negotiation. Historical scenario from 1998 to 2011 had to be captured in many scenes of repeated business disputes. So, we considered to take back ourselves back to that time period and have a clear picture of what had  actually  happened in the history.

Reflective Observation

        After having case in our hand, all group members read the case, went through different newspaper articles relating to business agreements followed by disputes between Starbucks and Kraft, and other relevant articles to the case. We decided to build a scenario so that we would have a concrete image of how we were going to direct the role play.

        We decided to make the role play interesting and came up with an interesting theme to design the whole role play as being broadcasted in news in one of the famous TV channel. We made a rough sketch of different scenes that would portray the historical development in business relationship between Starbucks and Kraft. Then we decided our roles with much difficulty because all members of our group were Doves in the DOPE test and everyone was ready to accept the position assigned. However, we decided our roles based on the requirement of the personalities involved in the case. I was assigned with the role of financial news analyst in BBC.

Finally, we thought of working on the scripts collectively because the dialogues had to be based on strict financial figures and diverse personality types. It helped us to maintain coherence between the sequence and meaning of what each member had to act in the play. We made provisions of representatives from both sides including an independent arbitrator from the district court.

Abstract Conceptualization

        All the team members prepared the script by covering relevant concepts learnt in our negotiation session with Arun sir. We collectively made modifications and adjustments in our role play so that we would be able to use the concepts studied in class into the role play. We used some important concepts like BATNA, power relationship matrix involving the relationship between substance and relationship, Leverage, and different conflicting situations in the role play. More importantly, we realized to make a fit between the roles to be played and our personality types to a greater extent.