Celebrating Excellence: Advanced Online Negotiations Wins FT Responsible Business Education Award

For the first time since its inception, INSEAD has won an FT Responsible Business Education award. It was Professors Eric Uhlmann, Horacio Falc?o,?and Roderick Swaab who won the 2025 Teaching Award for their innovative course,?Advanced Online Negotiations (AON).

The FT awards pay homage to business schools and courses that tackle issues of sustainability and societal justice. Advanced Online Negotiations (AON) is an online elective course at INSEAD, offered to MBA participants across INSEAD’s Europe, Asia, and Middle East campuses. AON is unique in that it aims to educate and empower future leaders to negotiate sustainable and resilient outcomes on complex sustainability issues, particularly in the often understudied and underrepresented Global South. Professor Falc?o explained, ‘We need to appreciate that the way we cook influences the taste of our meal. Similarly, the way we negotiate significantly impacts the quality and sustainability of our outcomes. It is not just about the end result, but also about how to get there.’

The course approaches sustainability from multiple angles using different case studies examples:

·?????? Environmental sustainability using the Golden Standard case. This explores stakeholder management involving a mining company, local governments, and indigenous communities in Latin America.

·?????? Social CSR using Astra, which examines labor-management collective bargaining agreements in India

·?????? Economic sustainability by using Fuel Safe, an oil company, and suppliers addressing social entrepreneurship and sustainability in Africa.

·?????? International sustainability looking at the Polygon case. A case which navigates cross-cultural differences in religion and business practices in the Middle East.

The course argues that sustainability is a crucial negotiation variable. Throughout the course, the Professors train participants to adopt win-win strategies, emphasizing that these methods foster sustainable outcomes where no party feels marginalized. Win-win strategies help build stronger, collaborative relationships, which are essential for addressing sustainability challenges. They prevent value destruction and enhance fairness and satisfaction in negotiations. In short, the course helps leaders adopt sustainable negotiation practices that align with and are required for addressing sustainability matters.

As we teach sustainability in the 21st century, the course recognizes the need to move away from non-sustainable negotiation practices, such as win-lose approaches. Professor Falc?o remarked, “Winning this FT award is a validation that pursuing sustainable negotiation strategies is a paradigm shift in negotiations and sustainability. Oftentimes, individuals mistake negotiations for a process where the ends justify the means in the pursuit of desirable objectives”

Sustainability issues cannot be imposed; effective teaching requires a commitment to inclusive and respectful negotiation processes. The course has had a significant impact with more students choosing to take this course each year. Around 140 students took the course in 2023, growing to over 170 students in 2024. Sustainability should not just be a topic of discussion but should permeate the entire negotiation process. Integrating both content and process increases the likelihood of successful, sustainable agreements.

Professors Uhlmann, Falc?o, and Swaab also developed, through the Negotiation and Conflict Management Collaborative (NCMC), the ‘Negotiation Course for the World (NCW)’. NCMC is an open and international platform dedicated to bringing together scholars and practitioners to collaborate on research and education on negotiation and conflict management.

We would like to congratulate Professors Eric Uhlmann, Horacio Falc?o,?and Roderick Swaab on their achievements.

To find out more about the Advanced Online Negotiations course: https://www.insead.edu/executive-education/open-online-programmes/advanced-negotiations

?