Batna for Soutwest Airlines and Muse/Transtar Essay

1. Introduction – Know your and their source of power – Analyze By identifying yours and their sources of power. But in order to do this, you need to know what gives one negotiator more power than another. Where is the source of power from, focusing on BATNA and resources. 2. Knowing – exploring a Good BATNA Also known as Best Alternative to reaching a Negotiated Agreement.. An example of a scenario of using BATNA would be, do you need to negotiate at all or do you have other options or alternatives available for you? Question: If this deal cannot be reached, how can I still reach my aim? The less you need to reach, the more powerful you are because you have a good BATNA, because you have other choices than completing the negotiation in question. Example of scenario: When haggling over the price of an item, a vendor may be wiling to lower their price significantly because they know that the other vendors in the market all carry a similar item and roughly at a similar price. Very much the vendors interest is to strike a deal with you at that moment, while you are more than ready to walk away because you have numerous other chances to shop for the item. Therefore leading to, your BATNA, consequently your negotiating power, is improved the less you need to complete the negotiation and the more you can  create other options for reaching your aims. Flipside, the other party’s negotiating power decreases the more they need to make a deal with you because they have fewer options available to them. 3. Access & Mobilization of Resources This would be the second source of negotiating power stems for the ability to access and mobilize resources. Having resources does not equate with being more powerful. Why? Answer: 1.First in context, power is context specific. Example, when you have a bag of candy, and the other person doesn’t, you clearly have more power. Its not the same when both have a bag of candy, therefore context makes all the difference in the world whether a resource has value or not. 2. Actualization, power is non existent if its not possible to express or actualize it. In other words, owning all the materials to build a house might make me more powerful, but if I don’t have the skills or tools to build anything, then my power is reduced because I cannot reach my aim. Therefore power stemming from access to resources is only real power when resources can be mobilized. 4. Collect Information What is their BATNA, what resource is relevant to this particular negotiation and which one do they don’t have access to control? Can they mobilized the resources they possess? What are their restrictions and will they be able to overcome these restrictions? The answers to these types of question will be vital for the next step of formulating a full negotiating strategy. 5. Strategy Development Your goal is to protect your own interest while looking to reach a solution that also meets your interests. Somewhat ironically, as you help empower yourself to meet your interest and by helping them to meet theirs, you are co-empowering them. That is if both parties reach a deal that meets our common interest, then both would be more powerful through the process  because both got what they wanted from negotiations. This means protecting your interest, by increasing your power while accounting for the influence of theirs. This requires skillful use of both protective or defensive measures in order to deflect and re-channel their use of power into an agreement that is mutual benefit. Power Tactics There are a number of tactics to make your negotiating strategy happen: 1. Protect or reveal information at key points while being careful not to reveal anything that would compromise you. 2. Collect information from the other party – Keep it confidential or reveal it at certain key points if it will help advance your mutual interest. 3. Make reaching a deal with you an attractive option while improving your BATNA by developing other avenues to reach your goals. 4. Change the context in favor 5. Increase your resources- ensuring you can mobilize them. Decrease their resources from mobilizing them if they are being used in a manner that is detrimental to reach a mutual acceptable deal. 6. Leverage your resources for maximum effectiveness 7. Be firm and focus: Know your objectives and all available resources to it.