The modules of the "Negotiation At Its Best" training will serve as an educational "lab," to be observed by conflict resolution scholars and teacher/trainers from around the world. Immediately following the training course, on May 29-30, the symposium "The Future of Negotiation Teaching" will then take place.
During the Symposium the observers will convene, along with the course faculty and a few representative students, to critique the training. What works? What needs to be adapted to be relevant for global audiences? What recent discoveries should now be incorporated in these "executive" courses?
The scholars and trainers will focus on systematic creation of "second generation" negotiation training design. After an initial program plenary, participants will break into small working groups to examine, among other things, how the collective wisdom making up the contemporary multi-disciplinary science of consensual dispute resolution can best be integrated into new negotiation training models. Special emphasis will be placed on the special challenges posed by delivering "standardized" training in different cultural and linguistic environments. Scholars who agree to participate are committing to write immediately thereafter a contribution to the project's published output, in the form of either a chapter for the project's pre-planned book, or an article for the already-committed special issue of NEGOTIATION JOURNAL. Rough drafts will be due 60 days after the conference ends.
The second phase of the initiative includes two forms of publications. One set of scholarly papers will be published in a special issue of NEGOTIATION JOURNAL. In addition, thanks to a generous grant from the JAMS Foundation, a different set of writings will be published in book form, widely disseminated worldwide, and translated into several languages.
Christopher Honeyman, James Coben and Giuseppe De Palo will be guest editors for the NEGOTIATION JOURNAL special issue, as well as editors of the book. This dual role allows the editors to decide how best to configure both publications only after the contributors have outlined what they intend to write, allowing for flexibility and creativity in both publications.
