Bargaining with the Devil: when to negotiate, when to fight

By Robert Mnookin

In an age of terror, national leaders face this sort of question every day. Should we negotiate with the Taliban? Iran? North Korea? What about terrorist groups holding hostages? In private disputes, you may face devils of your own. A business partner has betrayed you and now wants to negotiate a better deal. Your marriage is ending and your spouse is making extortionist demands. A business competitor has stolen your intellectual property. Your sister is fighting you over an inheritance. In cases such as these, you feel outraged. Your gut tells you to fight it out in court.

But when facing a devil — anyone you perceive as a harmful adversary — it may make more sense to negotiate rather than fight, says Robert Mnookin, the internationally renowned leader in the art of negotiation. How do you decide?

In Bargaining with the Devil, Mnookin provides tools for confronting adversaries of all kinds. Using eight conflicts drawn from history (including fascinating examples such as Churchill’s approach to Hitler, and Nelson Mandela’s response to South Africa’s apartheid regime), as well as his own professional experience, he offers a framework that applies equally to international conflicts and everyday life.

‘There is no easy, categorical answer,’ Mnookin warns. ‘Sometimes you should bargain with the Devil and other times you should refuse.’ The challenge lies in making wise decisions in particular circumstances. This book shows you how.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Scribe Publications
• Release date: Aug 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9781921942068

Robert Mnookin

Robert H. Mnookin is the Samuel Williston Professor of Law at Harvard Law, the Chair of the Steering Committee of the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, and the Director of the Harvard Negotiation Research Project. A renowned teacher and lecturer, Professor Mnookin has taught numerous workshops for corporations, governmental agencies and law firms throughout the world and trained many executives and professions in negotiation and mediation skills. Professor Mnookin has written or edited nine books and numerous scholarly articles. His books include Beyond Winning: Negotiating to Create Value in Deals and Disputes (with Scott Peppet and Andrew Tulumello) and Negotiating on Behalf of Others.

Reviews for Bargaining with the Devil

[schraubd · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book is not scholarly. Its anecdotes are fun to read, and in terms of manipulating businesspeople to try to negotiate more often when their instincts say duke it out, it probably is decently effective. And that's a laudatory aim, so I give Mnookin credit for that, though I'd of course have preferred it if he had accomplished this goal via actual arguments rather than rhetorical sleights of hand.The book is very uncritical and non-reflective towards negotiation as a concept (it doesn't give solid examples of when it is bad to negotiate, and the example he gives with respect to Churchill is astoundingly self-fulfilling). Moreover, at times is astoundingly self-promoting. To the extent one is looking for a "serious" discussion of the issues Mnookin purports to raise, you're in the wrong place. It definitely falls less in the "important contributions to negotiating theory" box, and more in the "busy executive self-help box". Which, of course, is a useful box -- but one that I think is beneath Mnookin's considerable talents.

[gshuk_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I liked that this book explored dealing with opponents who you have a negative visceral response to. It seemed that the stories (which were very interesting) were longer than the few ideas presented here. While it fell short of delivering on the title it is still worth reading.