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CS Professional · Arbitration, Mediation and Conciliation · Negotiation Skills and Communication

Two small Pune manufacturers, Kiran Tools and Shah Castings, dispute a delivery delay. Each starts by demanding a position it will not give up, and each tries to win the point by out-lasting the other. Which negotiation approach are they following?

They are following positional (distributive) bargaining. Each side stakes out a fixed position and tries to win by endurance, treating the dispute as a fixed pie. Interest-based or principled approaches would instead look at underlying needs and joint options, which these parties are not doing.

  1. APositional (distributive) bargainingCorrect
  2. BInterest-based (integrative) negotiation
  3. CPrincipled negotiation using objective criteria
  4. DCollaborative problem solving

Explanation

Both parties adopt fixed positions and treat the matter as a contest of wills, where one party's gain is the other's loss. This is positional or distributive bargaining. Interest-based approaches would explore underlying needs, which is absent here.

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