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Continued attention in both the popular and academic press regarding negotiation and the related concepts of influence and persuasion is nothing short of astonishing. The topics on which we focus in this article, however, are rarely-if ever-vetted in such outlets. We venture, with some measure of caution, into the dark side of negotiation: those tactics that may be duplicitous, unethical, and unprincipled. Such tactics provide a quintessential moral hazard, as they are both brutally effective and rarely illegal. It is not our intent to provide a treatise on unsuitable behavior. Rather, our objective is to establish that no one need be victimized by such behaviors, as all of these tactics are avoidable. It is in this spirit that we provide some guidelines on self-defense in a negotiation context to avert and attenuate the consequences of these behaviors.

We believe that the practice of threat as a negotiation tactic is essentially without merit. While its risks are outsized, its benefits are few, if any. This renders threat utterly bankrupt as a strategy. Herein, we explore the drawbacks of threat as a negotiation tactic, and offer a series of practice pointers relevant to threat and its potential defenses.

Although women are making slow inroads onto the boards of the Fortune 500, those who have arrived are gaining influence at a good clip. The percentage of women sitting on, and heading, crucial committees - such as audit, compensation, and nominating and corporate governance - is increasing markedly.

In recent years, the entire fabric of corporate governance, certainly in the United States, has dramatically changed. With the passage of what has colloquially become known as SOX (the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002), US-based corporations have operated under stricter governance guidelines than at any previous time, especially as regards the structure of boards of directors and financial oversight of the corporation. A now perennial governance "hot button" issue not addressed by SOX is concern over continually rising executive compensation. Until the 2006 adoption of new compensation disclosure guidelines by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), it had been nearly 15 years since federal attention had been devoted to compensation guidelines or regulations. Beginning with 2007 filings, US corporations must now include a Compensation Disclosure and Analysis (CD&A) section. The intent behind the CD&A is to provide investors access to clear explanations of executive compensation and the philosophy that underlies compensation. As often happens, this good intent is accompanied by several unintended risks that may mitigate the effectiveness of the CD&A.