Negotiation is the process of two individuals or groups reaching joint agreement about differing needs or ideas. Oliver (1996) described negotiation as "negotiators jointly searching a multidimensional space and then agreeing to a single point in the space."

Negotiation applies knowledge from the fields of communications, sales, marketing, psychology, sociology, politics, and conflict resolution. Whenever an economic transaction takes place or a dispute is settled, negotiation occurs; for example, when consumers purchase automobiles or businesses negotiate salaries with employees.

Negotiation Styles

Two styles of negotiating, competitive and cooperative, are commonly recognized. No negotiation is purely one type or the other; rather, negotiators typically move back and forth between the two styles based on the situation.

On one end of the negotiation continuum is the competitive style. Competitive negotiation— also called adversarial, noncooperative, distributive bargaining, positional, or hard bargaining— is used to divide limited resources; the assumption is that the...