Week 11

07/06/2021

When I first read the case study on the washing machine, I could easily grasp the problem, but it is quite complicated because of more than two parties involved in the negotiation, and I think it is quite safe to say here that I never found one like this. However, as I read thoroughly a few more times and highlighted certain important parts that need to be noted, I found that the only way to crack the negotiation impasse in this situation would be by using a compromising approach.

Well, we know that people who are involved in negotiation surely know that negotiation comes together with losing something to gain something. From that, I believe that the negotiation approach that I chose would definitely satisfy all sides. If we were to look into the conflict that they were facing, we could find that all sides could be at fault except for the store manager, because the washing machine did go through all of the others before reaching into the hands of the retailer.

Even though all of them did not admit their mistakes, we as the third party (the reader) would easily find out that though none of them intentionally did wrong, it just happened so it should be fair for everyone to pay some for the damage cost. In this situation, we could understand that the lack of communication skills and also the empathies with each other are truly the reason for the negotiation impasse.

Asides from that, while I was figuring out the answers that I have to come up with, I realized that the provided questions are quite detailed, and I found myself looking through the negotiation steps in a short exercise that we were given as a task too. Of course, I wasn’t aware that the steps could actually help me a lot in answering the washing machine questions. Since the steps were there together with explanations, it did really aid me to answer the washing machine’s questions better.

Now that I learned about the negotiation impasse, I finally found out that the steps in the short exercise were actually the resolution for the negotiation impasse. By linking everything together, plus with the different thoughts from my other coursemates, I learned a bit more than I thought I would, and it was really great to hear others’ views as well.