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23 Negot. J. 1 (2007)

handle is hein.journals/nejo23 and id is 1 raw text is: 





             Editor's Note



                   Negotiation Journal

The adage that there's nothing new under the sun dates back at least to
Ecclesiastes, a fact that should give us pause before celebrating techniques
and ideas as entirely novel. Nevertheless, the selections in this first install-
ment of the Journal for 2007 offer refreshingly new perspectives on famil-
iar negotiation issues. New insights can, indeed, illuminate old problems.
    For example, Cheryl Picard and Kenneth Melchin seek to move beyond
the debates in the mediation community sparked by the publication of both
The Promise  of Mediation by Robert Baruch Bush and Joseph Folger and
Narrative Mediation by John Winslade and Gerald Monk. In their article,
they describe how those books prompted  them to reflect on the implicit
values and techniques they and their colleagues have used as mediators;
they call their approach insight mediation. Drawing on Canadian philoso-
pher Bernard Lonergan's theories about how people learn and formulate
their perceptions, Picard and Melchin are especially interested in surfacing
a-ha moments that can be both cognitive and affective. Long-time readers
will see how their article nicely advances some of the ideas collected in the
special Negotiation journal issue on critical moments in negotiation (April
2004).
    Steven Burg's NGOs  and Ethnic Conflict likewise clarifies the para-
doxical connections between mediator power and effectiveness, a relation-
ship that was earlier explored in an article by Michael Watkins and Kim
Winters entitled Intervenors with Interests and Power (April 1997). Burg's
case analysis of the work of the Project on Ethnic Relations in the Balkans
notes that the success of that organization as a weak mediator was due in
part to its support from and influence with major institutional actors. Its
efforts were stymied, however, once more powerful actors, such as the U.S.
and EU, became  directly involved.
    In turn, Ilai Alon and Jeanne Brett shed light on how differing concep-
tions of time can affect the dynamic when people from Arabic-speaking
Islamic cultures and the West negotiate with each other. Fundamentally
different notions of time can prompt misunderstandings and distrust, they
note, even when all participants have the best of intentions.
    Finally, in an imaginative and gracefully written review, Linda Babcock
examines the underlying metaphors of two important new books on nego-
tiation, 3-D Negotiation by David Lax and James Sebenius and Shaping the
Game  by Michael Watkins. Although they use different metaphors to do so,
both  books make  compelling  cases that moves away from  the table


Negotiation Journal January 2007 1

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