Common elements in the analysis of the negotiation process

Like the proverbial blind men who confronted the elephant and brought back conflicting accounts of its salient characteristics, contemporary analysts of nego­ tiation appear to be talking about different things under the name of the same phenomenon. Some have even called for a search for a common understanding of the subject so that analysis can proceed on the same epistemological track. This article, however, suggests that a common understanding of the negotia­ tion process has already developed and analysts are using it. The diversity that can be found in a number of approaches--five of which are identified-merely displays different ways of talking about the same phenomenon, and in fact even involves the same questions and parameters presented from different angles and under different names. There is more unity than some have suspected, and more complementarity too, as different approaches reinforce and build on each oth­ er's analysis. However, many aspects of the process still elude this common but multifaceted analysis. The common notion of the process has led analysts to confront these continuing problems, but there is of course no certainty that further answers to obdurate problems will not produce new terms of analysis and even new notions of the whole process. It is paradoxical and perhaps confusing that there is no single dominant analytical approach to negotiation. The confusion arises from the presence of many different attempts at analysis, sometimes inventing their own wheels to carry forward their insights and sometimes crossreferencing from a number of different analytical approaches (e.g., see cases in Zartman, 1987a and 1987b; and Davidow, 1984). The fact that all of these are studies of great value only confirms the analytical confusion. The paradox arises because behind this analyt­ ical diversity there lies a single phenomenon to be analyzed. Although some