Submitted by: Submitted by dangerguy101
Views: 10
Words: 7410
Pages: 30
Category: Business and Industry
Date Submitted: 05/14/2016 12:32 AM
Ethics in Negotiation: Oil and
Water or Good Lubrication?
H. Joseph Reitz, James A. Wall, Jr,, and Mary Sue Love
I
n his 1996 year-end column for Forbes, merchant banker and economist John Rutledge
describes two weeks of negotiations over an
acquisition for a private equity fund. The hours of
bargaining were tense, long, hard, and far more
complicated than he had envisioned. Nevertheless, he reports:
Despite all the haggling, we ended on a
friendly note. All of us-buyer,
seller.
lender-shook
hands and clinked champagne glasses. As we were leaving, the
seller said he would like to discuss
teaming up with us in a joint venture. I
beamed. Some buyers wouldn’t have
liked this. They think if the seller doesn’t
hate them at the end of a deal, they
haven’t squeezed
out every last drop of
money. I disagree. We believe that when
someone wants to do repeat business
with us, it is the highest form of praise.
Allowing your opponent in a transaction
to walk away with his dignity, his humor,
and his bearing intact, and with a pretty
good deal in his pocket, is the right way
to do business.
W
.walk away from a deal, any deal,
rather than violate your principles to win
it., .The twist, of course, is that business
organizations
organized around principles are often more successful and
make more money than those organized
around the idea that greed is good. Nice
guys often finish first.
Ethics in Negotiation:
Oil and Water
or Good
Lubrication?
Being the “nice
guy” isn’t so bad.
It works, it feels
better--and it
pays off.
QUESTIONABLE
NEGOTIATION
AND ETHICAL CRITERIA
Rutledge then lists a set of principles learned
from his first business partner and admonishes
his readers to
Rutledge’s thesis that ethical negotiating
not only the right thing to do but frequently
also more profitable represents an argument more common today than in the socalled “decade of greed” in
the 1980s-and
one that
finds more...