Howard Raiffa
Helped found and was the first director of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.
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Disputants often fare poorly when they each act greedily and deceptively.
The party that negotiates in haste is often at a disadvantage.
The need is not for the creation of new analytical techniques specially designed for the negotiation process, but rather for the creative use of analytical thinking that exploits existing techniques.
Each party tended to view its own chances in court as better than the other side viewed them.
Game theory, however, deals only with the way in which ultrasmart, all knowing people should behave in competitive situations, and has little to say to Mr. X as he confronts the morass of his problem.
The best practical advice then is: try to maximize your expected payoff, which is the sum of all payoffs multiplied by probabilities.
There is no shortage of disputes.
" the mediation of internal conflicts can be resolved by linkages with other problems."
We act like a zero-sum society, when in reality there is a lot of non zero-sum fat to be skimmed off to everyone's mutual advantage.
A final word of advice: don't gloat about how well you have done.
After a little reflection, the best strategy becomes clear: bid aggressively up to a maximum cutoff value and then quit.
It's worth repeating here, though, because we are talking about mechanisms for resolving conflict and many people don't realize it's impossible to devise a foolproof scheme.
Advice: don't embarrass your bargaining partner by forcing him or her to make all the concessions.
The art of compromise centers on the willingness to give up something in order to get something else in return. Successful artists get more than they give up.
Final-offer arbitration should have great appeal for the daring (the risk seekers) who play against the timid (the risk avoiders).
A lot depends on the starting point.
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