Miami School District Negotiation Paper

MGT 445 Week 4 Individual Assignment Miami School District Negotiation Paper

MGT 445 Week 4 Individual Assignment Miami School District Negotiation Paper

Who are the stakeholders?

There are numerous stakeholders in this scenario. First of all, school authorities including the school staff are the major stakeholders. Further, students and parents are the next important group of stakeholders. Other stakeholders in this scenario include community in the vicinity of the school. Vendors and suppliers associated with the school are also stakeholders in the scenario.

What negotiation strategy do you use to support the school board’s need to redraw the boundaries while addressing the concerns of the stakeholders?

The best negotiation strategy for this scenario will be a strategy that aims to achieve a win-win situation for all the parties. Win-Win bargaining or integrative bargaining, is a negotiation strategy that aims to address the interests of all the parties involved in the negotiation and develops a solution in the best interests of all the parties. In other words, such a negotiation strategy strives to make everyone happy.

In the above mentioned scenario, the decision to redraw the boundaries while addressing the concerns of the stakeholders requires solutions that not only fulfils the objective of the school authorities, but also address the numerous concerns of the stakeholders. Therefore, integrative bargaining will help in attaining a mutually beneficial solution.

“Integrative bargaining involves parties in a collaborative effort to jointly meet each other’s needs and satisfy mutual interests. Rather than moving from positions to counter positions to a compromise settlement, negotiators pursuing an interest-based bargaining approach attempt to identify their interests or needs and those of other parties prior to developing specific solutions. After the interests are identified, the negotiators jointly search for a variety of settlement options that might satisfy all interests, rather than argue for any single position. The parties select a solution from these jointly generated options. This approach to negotiation is frequently called integrated bargaining because of its emphasis on cooperation, meeting mutual needs, and the efforts by the parties to expand the bargaining options so that a wiser decision, with more benefits to all, can be achieved” (Moore, n.d).

“Integrative bargaining is important because it usually produces more satisfactory outcomes for the parties involved than does positional bargaining. Positional bargaining is based on fixed, opposing viewpoints (positions) and tends to result in compromise or no agreement at all. Oftentimes, compromises do not efficiently satisfy the true interests of the disputants. Instead, compromises simply split the difference between the two positions, giving each side half of what they want. Creative, integrative solutions, on the other hand, can potentially give everyone all of what they want. Integrative solutions are generally more gratifying for all involved in negotiation, as the true needs and concerns of both sides will be met to some degree. It is a collaborative process and therefore the parties actually end up helping each other. This prevents ongoing ill will after the negotiation concludes. Instead, interest-based bargaining facilitates constructive, positive relationships between previous adversaries” (Spangler, 2003).

In this scenario, the school authorities plan to convince the parents and address their concerns will revolve around integrative bargaining.

In order to proceed via win-win bargaining, the school authorities should try to ascertain the main interest of the parents. Basically, the school authorities need to find out the main caused behind protest against the redrawing of boundaries, so that it can come up with a solution that addresses the concerns of the parents.

The scenario mentions some of the possible causes behind parent’s protest, such as quality of education, increased travel time, crossing economic and cultural boundaries, impact on property values and social impact on children. Based on these arguments, school authorities can propose solutions that address each of these concerns.

For example, the concern related to quality of education can be best addressed by presenting facts pertaining to improvement in quality due to redrawing of boundaries. For example, school authorities can put forth reasoning that redrawing of boundaries will allow the school to significantly improve upon the existing facilities and infrastructure of the school. The new boundaries will be able to accommodate better and larger facilities. Further, school can put forth strategies aimed at significantly improving the quality of education with larger number of students via a dedicated plan of action. Such efforts will put more confidence in the minds of the parents and will show the seriousness of the school in terms of sustaining and improving quality of education with more number of students.

The concerns pertaining to increased travel time can be effectively addressed by putting forth a concrete plan of action for improving the existing transportation services. School authorities can also put forth an argument that the improvement in transport infrastructure will result in reduction of increased travel time and the overall impact on travel time will be minimal. The school authorities can raise the point that with increase in number of buses, each bus will actually pick up less number of students and thus, it will actually decrease the travel time. The school authorities can show concrete plan of action to procure additional buses to the parents.

Strategies such as introduction of additional buses, addition of new routes and improved buses will significantly reduce the travel time and improve convenience of students.

Further, the reasoning against crossing economic and cultural boundaries can include commitment from the school authorities that vision, mission and philosophy of the school will remain the same. The increase in enrollment will have no impact on the educational atmosphere of the school. The school will continue to operate on the same philosophy and guidelines as it is being run today. The fee structure will be remaining the same and the expansion would not have any additional burden on the students. School authorities can address this concern of the parents by stressing on the fact that even with larger infrastructure and bigger scale of operations; school will continue to operate within the same cultural and philosophical guidelines and framework and will never cross those boundaries.

The argument against impact on property values can be addressed by pointing to the facts that such expansion of school boundaries will not have any impact on commercial property values because school is a nonprofit entity and acquires real estate at subsidized rates from government. Hence, the impact of such expansion on property values will not be significant as such acquisition of land is not guided by commercial interests.

Further, school is just a single entity and there are numerous other developments in the area that can affect property prices. Hence, it is unfair to put the burden of increase in real estate values on school alone. The school authorities can present facts pertaining to existing real estate prices with pointers to impact on prices due to factors other than the school’s acquisition of land. Such clear cut facts will convince parents that the acquisition of land by school is not the sole factor in pushing real estate prices and there are other factors as well that determine real estate prices in the area.

In terms of the social impact on children, school can provide reasoning that such redrawing of boundaries and enrollment of higher number of students will actually help in improving the overall infrastructure, quality of education and facilities at the school. The larger scale of operations will help in realizing many objectives that were previously not possible with smaller size of school. The students will actually get better quality of education and thus, there will be no negative impact in terms of social values. School authorities can point out several areas that will significantly improve due to establishment of upgraded infrastructure. For example, school authorities can highlight the fact that improved infrastructure will provide new avenues to children to explore their inner potential and improve their future career.

How do ethics and culture affect your decision?

Ethics and culture will play a very important role in my decision as school is a not for profit entity and the scenario involves future of children. Therefore, the final decision should be arrived at by evaluating all the ethical concerns pertaining to education and future of children and impact of such decision on society. The decision should not compromise on ethical values and existing culture and should be taken after evaluating all possible ethical concerns of the stakeholders of the organization.

Ethical guidelines will help in determining the correct course of action in the best interests of all the parties. If the school authorities will keep ethical guidelines and culture in mind, their proposed solution will address the concerns of the parents and stakeholders in all the above mentioned areas, rather than focusing on their own benefits. For example, their decision would address ethical issues pertaining to quality of education in a comprehensive manner to satisfy the concerns of the parents. They cannot overlook this ethical issue in their proposed solution.

Similarly, the culture pursued at the school will have to be preserved in the future as well. The plan of action will be finalized within the framework and guidelines of the school’s culture and philosophy in terms of providing the highest quality education to children.

References

Spangler Brad (2003) Integrative or Interest-Based Bargaining: Retrieved December 25, 2012

from http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/interest-based_bargaining/

Moore W. Christopher (n.d) Negotiation: Retrieved December 25, 2012 from

http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/army/usace/negotiation.htm