Books : Essentials of Negotiation

Rating: - We've got another looser - why doesn't Amazon allow for minus-signed stars?
Amazing how badly written books people dare to put in the market place, and how easily they can get away with it... Consider this book one BIG rip off, and for this simple reason: this book *will not tell you how to negotiate*, despite it's title, and the fact that it is 4th edition already.

All this book does is giving a *bad* summary of thing that may, or may not, happen in a negotiation process, AND: you know all this by yourself already... BUT: it doesn't tell you how to deal with it (!) So somewhere it is written "people can try to lure you into things" (yah, sure, as if any reader doesn't know that already), but they give *no* instructions how to deal with it. Aside from this, it is hilarious what is written. I'm actually extremely p*ssed off because again I have been misled by "reputable professors" (sigh), so I am not going to write too much about all the nonsense in this book, but consider this, as just one (of many(!)) example how ignorant these authors are: CH5 "Cognitive Biases in Negotiation", page 122: "Irrational escalation of commitment", which is a situation in which a negotiator will not give in on his demands, even when that doesn't logically make sense anymore. According to the authors caused by the negotiator wanting to save face and by his desire "to maintain an impression of expertise and control". This is one of the very rare cases in which they actually try to tell you what to do about that, but then it becomes hilarious: "one way to combat these tendencies is to have an advisor serve as a reality checkpoint - someone who is not consumed by "the heat of the moment" and who can warn negotiators when they inadvertently begin to behave irrationally"... CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS ABSOLUTE NONSENSE? This reads: if you are the negotiator and somebody does strange things hire a consultant...(hahahaha: who even dares to write this), or alternatively reads: ask somebody to play daddy - to make sure you kids behave and play nicely together. The right answer to this problem of course is make sure you construct your offers in such a way that somebody is always able to save face, and in the situation of somebody wanting to maintain an image of power/control/expertise, make sure you construct an offer that includes something that still makes sure your counterpart is considered an expert/the guy "who did it".

Ok, then, one other one: CH6 "Communication" (complete bloatware as well), p135-137, the authors introduce 5 "categories" of communication, and then, without shame, happily continue to say that in a negotiation people can talk about offers/counteroffers/motives, alternatives, outcomes, social stuff, the negotiation process (are these "categories"? Not from where I come from. Maybe these "reputable professors" need to look up the scientific definition of a category...). I can talk about a zillion other things as well, but the thing is: this is illustrative for what I wrote earlier: they write a lot of bladiebliebladiebla but it doesn't relate to anything (!) This crap fills two pages with no relevance: they just write this is what people can talk about, but they don't tell you what you should do with that information...

This book is a complete rip off, and I am pissed: it's my hard earned money. It's that I like Amazon too much, but otherwise I would have done what logic dictates: that I request a refund.

And then, to think, those poor students over at MIT are required to read this nonsense to get their MBA ...

Don't buy it, consider it my favor to you: you've been warned.