Practical Advantages and Disadvantages of Win Lose Negotiations

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Win lose negotiation also known as distributive negotiation is mainly characterized by its adversarial nature.

What is a win lose negotiation?

This is the type of negotiation in which one party intends to win and expect the other party to lose. The negotiation is zero-sum.

Negotiating parties generally walk in negotiation with two generic outcomes in mind; win-win and win-lose. The outcome desired is what determines the approach one uses and how to succeed in negotiation.

For the most part the choice between win lose negotiation and win-win just comes down to answering these questions

  1. Are you interested in results of the negotiation?
  2. Are you interested in the relationship with the other party?
  3. Or are you interested in both the relationship and the results?

For distributive negotiation, which is the subject of this article the answer is always, “I am interest in the results of the negotiation and nothing much.” This makes the negotiation rather transactional.

Win lose negotiation has its advantages and disadvantages. Let’s look at those.

What are the advantages?

The merits of this negotiation will include;

  • This approach ensures that the negotiator is focused on their position and nothing more. This would mean pushing past the other party’s resistance point and to the desired outcome
  • The transactional nature of distributive negotiation makes it suitable for the one-off purchases in which creation of relationship with suppliers is a waste of time
  • The approach is often perceived as being based on a powerful position from which one negotiates.
  • The negotiators using this approach aim at getting the most out of the negotiation, basically a big piece of ‘the pie’. This would then mean that the approach gives a competitive advantage if one succeeds.

What are the disadvantages

The approach has its own downside which will include things like;

  • The idea of aiming to maximize one’s own gain and not taking the other part’s perspective into account will leave the other party resentful and this will damage the business relationship.
  • The adversarial nature of the win lose negotiation approach means that it only works in short term
  • The approach does not leave room for flexibility.
  • Unlike approaches like win-win, this approach limits what one can get in the negotiation since the negotiator doesn’t aim at exploring other options to solve a problem. This would mean walking away with a win but missing out on other opportunities.

CONCLUSION

In distributive negotiation you are negotiating for what is believed by the parties to be fixed resources.

Distribute negotiation is a negotiation approach typically used in a set up where both parties are trying to divide something that is of a fixed quantity.

The parties view each other as adversaries, which makes the approach adversarial.

Your goal when using this approach is to negotiate in such a manner that when you reach an agreement, you have given up less than the other party. This is why the approach is zero-sum, somebody wins, somebody loses.