Negotiating a Deal

Negotiation analysis is a field, which is closely related to Multiple Criteria Decision Making—the subject of our book. It is a fascinating field. Sometimes you just negotiate over price, but often there are multiple issues (criteria) involved. In a negotiation situation, the general feeling is that the negotiating parties will be better off by reaching (or trying to reach) a settlement (a joint agreement), rather than acting independently on their own. In the simplest case, there are only two parties. However, multi-party negotiations are not uncommon either.