Building Bridges: New Dimensions in Negotiation - Essay Example

Prof. James Sebenius features prominently among the pioneers of the 3-D negotiation, partly, for having come up with the HBS Negotiation Unit. For the 1-D negotiation, there is focus on interpersonal tactics and skills at the negotiating table. The 1-D negotiation seeks to foster more effective negotiation processes, enhance relationships, nurture cultural sensitivity, strengthen relationships, and encourage the making of better and faster moves and countermoves. According to Sebenius, the 1-D negotiation cannot be easily done away with in totality, given that it goes a long way in displaying cultural sensitivity, setting a positive atmosphere for negotiations, enhancing communication, establishing trust, fostering creativity, framing a tenable framework and promoting creativity.

The import of the 1-D negotiation is that it helps in the determination of who, when and how to make an offer and a counteroffer and how high or low the offer or counteroffer should be (Lax and Sebenius, 2003). The 2-D negotiation mainly focuses on value creation ands deal design. 2-D negotiation is known for its knack for integrating scientific elements to the art of diagnosing the economic and non-economic values and in the creating of agreements that unlock values on long-term bases. Conversely, the 3-D negotiation specializes in aspects that are often overlooked.

As such, the 3-D negotiation shifts from the traditional table to a yet more promising set-up. Measures are made to ensure that the parties involved in the negotiation are tackling the right issues, in the right walk-away options, at the right table and in the right sequence. The crux of the matter herein is that 3-D negotiation appreciates the fact that great negotiators ought to be armed with assets that surpass just the skills and tactics. 3-D negotiation is emphatic that negotiators must find a way of setting up the right negotiation.

The import of this is that one has to consider whether or not to opt for a new set of partners for the negotiation, bring new players to the table, or reduce the number of players involved in the negotiation. According to Lax and Sebenius (2003), the immense benevolence of the 2-D negotiation is seen in the role it played in fostering a favorable balance in international peace, relations and diplomacy. Particularly, Sebenius points at the instance when the 2-D negotiation was used to broker peace between Israel and Egypt over the 60,000 km2 Sinai Peninsula.

Because of the nature of the 2-D negotiation being geared at factoring interests of the negotiators, the negotiation in Washington DC factored greatly, the reality that Israel’s chief interest and concern over the matter was security, while Egypt’s was territorial sovereignty. Courtesy of the dynamism of the 2-D negotiation, a complementary relationship between Israel and Egypt’s demands and interests was established. Resultantly, a demilitarized buffer zone under the flag of Egypt was put in place.

This was on March 26th, 1979. This proved to more tenable and sustainable (up to the present) than the original plan of establishing physical boundaries between the two countries. This stabilizing value in Middle East’s fluid international relations became possible because the 2-D negotiati