Introducing the Institute for Negotiation Innovation (INI)

Background to the establishment of the INI

Despite negotiation being at the core of how we address key commercial, political and socio-economic issues in general, negotiation research suffers from several drawbacks: ????

• The bulk of it (estimated at around 80%) focuses on theories and practices from so-called W.E.I.R.D countries, i.e. Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich and Democratic with the USA dominating the field by a very large margin. As a result, the field suffers from culturally biased models, strategies, techniques, and frames of reference.
• Negotiation research is largely speculative as the bulk of negotiation data is mainly derived from laboratory experiments or in-class simulations, surveys, questionnaires, and mathematical modeling rather than real-world observational research.
• With some exceptions, negotiation literature is replete with anecdotal advice and recipes for instant negotiation success, advice from fields that do not necessarily contribute to value maximisation in commercial settings (e.g. advice from hostage negotiators), or regurgitation of prescriptive negotiation advice learned in business or law school negotiation courses.??
• Negotiation research is also highly fragmented as it is studied from a multitude of angles, including political sciences, international relations and diplomacy, psychology and neuroscience, law and management, anthropology and sociology, and game theory. This ‘balkanisation’ of the field, often unsupported by empirical evidence from practice, impedes its development.?
• Finally, negotiation research is disseminated through channels and formats that are often inaccessible to practitioners or the public at large, often written in jargon and hidden in academic journals (often with paywalls), thus hindering easy access and broader dissemination.

Unlearning can be harder than learning

The result is that negotiators tend to fall back on the inevitably limited range of techniques from their training; what they believe works best from their particular cultural perspective or experience; what they once found to have been effective; their instincts; or what fits their own personal styles.

To address this deficiency, well-planned and coordinated field research is needed on a global and multi-disciplinary scale involving theorists as well as practitioners, supported by AI technology, to access real-world behavioural data in live negotiation settings.

The Institute for Negotiation Innovation

The Institute for Negotiation Innovation, a joint initiative by Vlerick Business School , Belgium and Sherbrooke University, Montreal was founded for exactly this reason as further explained here: https://ininegotiation.org Its current flagship project is the development of a Multi-faceted Intelligent Negotiation Assistant (or MINA) a planned, coordinated, non-partisan and multi-year field research program conducted on a global (i.e. cross-cultural) and multidisciplinary scale.

The general objective behind the MINA is to contribute to the development, structuring, and consolidation of an evidence-based negotiation science by identifying proven negotiation practices, organising them, and making them openly accessible to negotiators and other stakeholders.

Who are involved?

The INI can boast the involvement of more than 40 researchers, practitioners, and institutions specialising in the fields of negotiation, conflict, and dispute resolution to help generate empirical data in important negotiation areas and develop current and relevant information and techniques derived from that data.

For details about the INI board of directors and members of the INI Advisory Council, see INI Board of Directors and Advisory Council - Institute for Negotiation Innovation (ininegotiation.org)

For further information, please contact [email protected]