AFTER MADRID AND MAASTRICHT...SHOULD WE RETHINK NEGOTIATIONS?

Views Game Theory, as a long‐time companion model and guide for the exploration of negotiations, as having not only reached its limits but, perhaps, as having become counter‐productive in the search for greater understanding and skill. Suggests that a more powerful heuristic model may be available by turning to the current work on learning organizations. Suggests that by borrowing some of the basic concepts developed by C. Argyris and D. Schön, and considering negotiations as learning organizations, we allow ourselves to move from the analytical mode of Game Theory to a more synthetic approach. The synthetic approach allows us to distinguish more carefully between simple and difficult negotiations and to rethink success and failure. It also allows us to account more adequately for such phenomena as the preliminary negotiations to negotiate, the role of form, and the significance of the links between negotiator and home base. The pressing reality of current events in both international politics and business certainly should incite us to give serious consideration to this more operational model.