Negotiating Rationally Negotiating rationally – By Bazerman, Max H.; Neale, Margaret A., Free Press, New York, 1992, ISBN13: 978-0029019863, $12.29 paperback.
Negotiating Rationally by Bazermann et al. was written at a time when Science about negotiation was fairly recent. Therefore it reviews the literature already existent and also incorporates own experiences, gained during many seminars. The book is full of real life examples which were told or experienced by the author. Bazerman et al. consider the importance of negotiation as growing as the workforce gets more and more mobile, becomes more diverse (gender, age, nationality), the structure of companies is changing and the marketplace becomes global thus a lot more complex. The authors present a framework on negotiating rationally. This framework was developed a decade before writing the book and got intertwined with previous research as well as the experience of teaching Master students. As their Curriculum Vitae reveals, Bazerman as well as Neale specialized in organizational behavior. Bazerman worked on decision making, consumer behavior and negotiating skills. Neale worked primarily on Negotiation sciences but also on conflict management.

2. Summary of the Contents.

When looking at the book as a whole, it is divided into three parts. The first part presents seven common so called 'mistakes' in negotiation. The second part introduces a rational framework for negotiation. The last and third part gives advice on how to simplify complex negotiations. Each part is divided in up to seven chapters which gives the reader a very good division of the different topics and makes it very easy for the reader to look something up or to work with the book by just using a specific subject of the book. The index at the end contains the most important expressions and hence amplifies the ease of accessibility.