Essay on Distributive Bargaining and Mediation

On Distributive Bargaining and Mediation - Essay Example Distributive bargaining is generally referred as negotiation of win and loses between parties where both the parties attempt to maximize their profit and minimize personal losses. On the other hand, integrative bargaining focuses on developing a win-win situation for both the parties. It is also referred to as interest based bargaining as in this negotiation parties collaborate to determine a solution that generate mutual satisfaction. In certain specific situations, other measures of negotiation such as mediation are implemented as well. Mediation is one of the well-known processes of alternative dispute resolution where dispute resolution is facilitated through skilled leadership of a third party unbiased to the situation (Raiffa, 1982). In this paper, mediation and distributive bargaining have been compared and analyzed as measures of negotiation. The paper also highlights benefits and drawbacks of both the measures in context of conflict resolution and discusses situations where each of these methods is most suitable. It was gathered that a number of scholarly articles on dispute resolution indicates that primarily two kinds of negotiation strategies are adopted in most cases, namely, distributive bargaining and integrative bargaining. The philosophy of distributive bargaining focuses on value claiming and refrains from dividing the pie. There has been a mention of pie in this paper as the concept is often compared to division of pie by most researchers. The distributive bargaining is implied in terms of zero sum approach of economic theory because the process of dividing outcomes of an event under this method of negotiation is mutually exhaustive (Amanatullah, Morris & Curhan, 2008). One of the important aspects of distributive bargaining is that negative correlation is exhibited among interests of aggrieved parties while gain of one party is directly proportional to loss of another. Authors such