Negotiations and Change

Major changes within and between organizations are now generally negotiated by the parties that have a stake in the consequences of the changes. This was not always so. In 1965, with A Behavioral Theory of Labor Negotiations, Richard Walton and Robert McKersie laid the analytical foundation for much of the innovation in the practice of negotiation that has occurred over the last thirty-nine years. Since that time, however, the field has undergone significant changes, and Walton and McKersie's ideas have been applied to a wide variety of situations beyond labor negotiations.Negotiations and Change represents the next generation of thinking. Experts on negotiations, management, and organizational behavior take stock of what has been learned since 1965. They extend and apply the concepts of Walton and McKersie and of other leaders in the study of negotiations to a broad range of business, professional, and personal concerns: workplace teams, conflict management systems, corporate governance, and environmental disputes. While building on those foundations, the essays demonstrate the continued robustness and relevance of Walton and McKersie's behavioral theory by suggesting ways it could be used to improve the management of change. Returning to its roots, the volume concludes with a retrospective by Richard Walton and Robert McKersie.

This book is an excellent resource for students, teachers, researchers, and ADR practitioners. It's certainly a worthy follow-up to McKersie and Walton's classic work. The book shows how negotiation theory is holding up amid all the changes in our society, and it even expands the theory's applicability.

Thomas A. Kochan is the George M. Bunker Professor of Management at MIT's Sloan School of Management. He is coeditor, with Russell D. Lansbury and John Paul MacDuffie, of After Lean Production and coauthor with Saul A. Rubinstein of Learning from Saturn, both from Cornell. David B. Lipsky is Professor in the School of Industrial and Labor Relations, and Director of the Institute on Conflict Resolution, at Cornell University. He is coeditor of Going Public, also from Cornell, and coauthor of Emerging Systems for Managing Workplace Conflict. He is the President-Elect of the Labor and Employment Relations Association (LERA).