Howard Raiffa
Helped found and was the first director of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.
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" the mediation of internal conflicts can be resolved by linkages with other problems."
A lot depends on the starting point.
Final-offer arbitration should have great appeal for the daring (the risk seekers) who play against the timid (the risk avoiders).
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.
Advice: don't embarrass your bargaining partner by forcing him or her to make all the concessions.
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.
After a little reflection, the best strategy becomes clear: bid aggressively up to a maximum cutoff value and then quit.
A final word of advice: don't gloat about how well you have done.
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.
Disputants often fare poorly when they each act greedily and deceptively.
There is no shortage of disputes.
The best practical advice then is: try to maximize your expected payoff, which is the sum of all payoffs multiplied by probabilities.
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.
Each party tended to view its own chances in court as better than the other side viewed them.
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.
The party that negotiates in haste is often at a disadvantage.
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