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Two fictional travel companies, SCOUT and TravelPlanner, engage in competitive bidding to acquire a third party, Travelexis. This exercise consists of three roles, one representative from each of the three companies. It is based on the actual negotiations between Headhunter (represented by Travelexis), Yahoo! (SCOUT), and CareerBuilder (TravelPlanner).

Lattitude.com is a simple two-party, single-issue, primarily distributive negotiation regarding the potential sale of an internet domain name. It is designed to be negotiated entirely via e-mail, and may either be used in an online course or as a supplement to a face-to-face course. This simulation is a good vehicle for discussing the dynamics of distributive bargaining as well as the effect of the communication via email on both process and outcome.

Lattitude.com is a simple two-party, single-issue, primarily distributive negotiation regarding the potential sale of an internet domain name. It is designed to be negotiated entirely via e-mail, and may either be used in an online course or as a supplement to a face-to-face course. This simulation is a good vehicle for discussing the dynamics of distributive bargaining as well as the effect of the communication via email on both process and outcome.

French IT consulting giant Cap Gemini is poised to purchase the consulting arm of Ernst & Young, a U.S.-based Big 5 accounting firm. In doing so, many differences need to be resolved, including negotiating with Ernst & Young entities all over the world as well as converting Ernst & Young partners into employees of publicly held Cap Gemini. Amidst all of the decisions, the market for IT consulting services is changing rapidly, further complicating the merger negotiations and implementation. Teaching Purpose: To study the range of issues that must be considered and resolved in negotiating a professional services firm merger, the valuation and motivational challenges associated with merging a private entity into a public entity, and the challenges of negotiating a cross-border merger.

The negotiations for the merger between Cap Gemini and Ernst & Young conclude, resolving issues of how to bring together Ernst & Young consulting partnerships from all over the world into the publicly held Cap Gemini. Reactions to the merger were optimistic within Cap Gemini and Ernst & Young, but analysts voiced concerns about a cultural clash between the two firms and the viability of the new firm's strategy.

Part science, part art, decision making is one of an executive's primary accountabilities. A firm's success or failure relies heavily on the quality of the decisions its top managers make. Judging from these conversations and interviews with senior execs in high-tech companies, the decision-making process is, on average, noticeably more egalitarian than in traditional, hierarchical companies. In manufacturing operations, technical specifications drive the process; in service firms, customer behavior does. But in the high-tech world, the process is based on a group-aided or participative style, with a high tolerance for employee error.

Describes a marketing director about to launch a new process for demand forecasting. Provides data that allow students to do a multivariable regression analysis. A rewritten version of an earlier case.

In some languages, the word for "business" is the same as the word for "negotiation." That's not really surprising: Every interaction--with customers, suppliers, and even partners and investors--entails negotiation. And some involve very high stakes: The breakdown in negotiations between Hewlett-Packard's management and its founding families, for instance, put the company's future in doubt. Dominick Misino is a man who knows about negotiating when the stakes are at their very highest. As a hostage negotiator for the New York Police Department, Misino successfully persuaded the hijacker of Lufthansa Flight 592 to lay down his gun and turn himself in. Misino spent the last 6 years of his career as a primary negotiator, handling more than 200 incidents and never losing a life. Since his retirement in 1995, he has taught negotiating skills to law enforcement officials, military personnel, and business executives. Negotiation, he says, is really a series of small agreements, and he is adept at orchestrating those agreements from the start so that his adversary learns to trust him and come around to his point of view. In vivid and sometimes hair-raising detail, Misino demonstrates how he gets criminals to trust police officers enough to refrain from harming innocent parties and give themselves up. Many of the techniques he describes are surprisingly applicable to business negotiations, where the parties may seem equally intractable and failure is not an option.

Julio Martinez finds himself as one of the owners of the Arts Hotel Project in Barcelona, Spain. The 455-room hotel is managed by the Ritz Carlton and is in a 44-story tower along Barcelona's beachfront. Julio needs to figure out a strategy to maximize his investment, including a negotiation of the Ritz's operating agreement. Includes color exhibits.

What the acquiring company pays for a target in a merger or acquisition is called "consideration." Consideration can be in the form of cash, shares, or a combination of cash and shares. During the 1990s, equity-linked consideration became the dominant method of payment in the United States. This case series describes the basic mechanics of equity-linked consideration. Part 1 looks at the effects of all-stock consideration on the values realized by the shareholders of the target and acquiring companies.

The consideration paid by an acquiring company to a target can be a combination of cash and stock. During the 1980s and 1990s, for example, approximately 12% to 13% of all deals between public companies involved both cash and stock. This case series describes the basic mechanics of equity-linked consideration. Part 3 looks at the value and risk of cash-and-stock transactions to the shareholders of the acquiring and the target companies. The case also considers the announcement effects of such transactions and their impact on the post-announcement betas of the two companies.

This case is reflection on the importance of acquiring presence of mind in negotiations. Using a variety of metaphors, the case explores different ways for negotiators to achieve this selfawareness. Athletes experience the phenomenon of "being in the zone," artists and writers speak of being "in flow," and practitioners of mediation strive for "mindfulness." These different experiences all provide insight for negotiators as they face complex interpersonal and contextual discussions. This case resents a vivid example of a firefighter facing an extreme situation--and using an enviable presence of mind to see it through.

On August 3, 2001, after a hotly contested proxy fight, Wachovia Corp.'s shareholders voted to merge with First Union Corp. The managers of the two banks then turned to face the challenges of integrating the two organizations. Their task was to implement a "merger of equals" that would preserve the best parts of the two former companies while realizing the potential cost savings, operational efficiencies, and revenue gains that justified the combination in the eyes of the shareholders.

Discusses selecting investors and avoiding board-level conflicts of interest in start-ups. Using the "term sheet" in third-round financing as a negotiation over future governance and control rights. A rewritten version of an earlier case.

Lays out a framework for understanding the impact of government on business strategy. Distinguishes between two major types of "games" that businesses play that involve government: value net games and public interest games. Highlights the multiple roles that government agencies play as players, rule makers, and referees as well as the need to factor in the impact of multiple levels of government.

This case lays out a framework for how smaller companies should approach building strategic alliances with larger partners.

This case summarizes how American courts measure damages in wrongful death suits. Various standards are compared, as are their implications for business management.

This case highlights an application of current thoughts in complexity science to negotiation theory. It emphasizes a provocative approach that questions much of traditional negotiation research thus far. The case explains the roots of complexity science and some broad ideas and definitions, such as linearity versus nonlinearity, feedback loops, and chaos. It turns to a subset of complexity science--the study of complex adaptive systems. These systems have interactive feedback loops and critical junctures that affect the future course of the system. Also, they are highly adaptive and creative. Negotiations are complex, adaptive systems and should be studied at the micro, interactional scale. Five key lessons are drawn: 1) seemingly simple negotiations can take surprisingly different paths; 2) situations that appear complex may be driven by only a few key factors; 3) large patterns are often reflected in small ones; 4) complex adaptive systems, like negotiation, are not utterly random, yet neither do they have a fixed equilibrium; and 5) creativity is spawned at the chaotic edge.

This exercise helps students evaluate their negotiating style on traditional measures of creating versus claiming, and empathy and assertiveness. In just a few minutes, they can see where their natural style lies on a matrix.

You call a meeting to try to convince your boss that your company needs to make an important move. Your argument is impassioned, your logic unassailable, your data bulletproof. Two weeks later, though, you learn that your brilliant proposal has been tabled. What went wrong? It's likely the proposal wasn't appropriately geared toward your boss's decision-making style, say consultants Gary Williams and Robert Miller. Over the course of several years' research, the authors have found that executives have a default style of decision making developed early in their careers. That style is reinforced through repeated successes or changed after several failures. Typically, the authors say, executives fall into one of five categories of decision-making styles: Charismatics are intrigued by new ideas, but experience has taught them to make decisions based on balanced information, not just on emotions. Thinkers are risk-averse and need as much data as possible before coming to decisions. Skeptics are suspicious of data that don't fit their worldview and, thus, make decisions based on their gut feelings. Followers make decisions based on how other trusted executives, or they themselves, have made similar decisions in the past. And controllers focus on the facts and analytics of decisions because of their own fears and uncertainties. But most business presentations aren't designed to acknowledge these different styles--to their detriment. In this article, the authors describe the various subtleties of the five decision-making styles and how best to persuade executives from each group. Knowing executives' preferences for hearing or seeing certain types of information at specific stages in their decision-making process can substantially improve your ability to tip the outcome in your favor, the authors conclude.