Jeanne Brett

Brett, Jeanne. 1983. Grievance Meditation in the Coal Industry: A Field Experiment. Industrial and labor Relations Review. 37(1): 49-69.

This article describes an experiment in the mediation of grievances that recently took place during two six-month periods in four districts of the United Mine Workers of America. Eighty-nine percent of the 153 grievances taken to mediation during the experiment were resolved before arbitration. This success rate did not appear to be influenced by whether one or both parties had to consent to take a grievance to mediation, or by the identity of the mediator or the nature of the issue, although no discharge grievances were mediated in the experiment. Instead, the key to settlement appeared to be the parties' willingness to negotiate. Cost savings attributable to mediating instead of arbitrating the 153 cases were nearly $100,000, and the average grievance was resolved three months sooner in mediation than it would have been had it gone to arbitration. Most of the participants in the experiment had favorable attitudes toward the process, regardless of the outcome of their particular case.

Brett, Jeanne. 2007. Negotiating Globally: How to Negotiate Deals, Resolve Disputes, and Make Decisions across Cultural Boundaries. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2nd ed.

Negotiating Globally , 2007 Jossey Bass When it was first published in 2001, Negotiating Globally quickly became the basic reference for managers who needed to learn how to negotiate successfully across boundaries of national culture. This thoroughly revised and expanded second edition preserves the structure of the acclaimed first edition and improves upon it, making it even easier to learn how to navigate national culture when negotiating deals, resolving disputes, and making decisions in teams. Rather than offering country-specific protocol and customs, Negotiating Globally provides a general framework to help negotiators anticipate and manage cultural differences. This new edition incorporates the lessons of the latest research with new emphasis on executing a negotiation strategy and negotiating conflict in multicultural teams. The well received chapter on government at and around the table has been expanded and updated with new examples that span the globe. In this comprehensive resource, Jeanne M. Brett describes how to develop a negotiation planning document and shows how to execute the plan. She provides a model that explains how the cultural environment affects negotiators’ interests, priorities, and strategies. She provides benchmarks for distinguishing good deals from poor ones and good negotiators from poor ones. The book explains how resolving disputes is different from making deals and how negotiation strategy can be used in multi-cultural teams. Negotiating Globally challenges negotiators to expand their repertoire of strategies so that they will be able to close deals, resolve disputes, and get teams to make decisions regardless of the cultures represented at the table. This new edition includes a CD-ROM that contains illustrative case studies based on real global negotiations. There is, in addition, a complete online Instructor’s Guide with teaching notes, course outlines, and advice for what experiential negotiation exercises to use to teach the principles underlying each chapter located at www.wiley.com/college . The Author Jeanne M. Brett is the DeWitt W. Buchanan Jr. Distinguished Professor of Dispute Resolution and Organizations at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, where she is also the director and a founding member of the Dispute Resolution Research Center. Brett is the also an author of the award-winning Getting Disputes Resolved: Designing Systems to Cut the Costs of Conflict . Brett has won many awards for her scholarship and teaching including most recently the International Association for conflict Management’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

Brett, Jeanne, Katherine Nelson and Nicole Tilzer. 2009. Negotiating for Fertilizer. Case 5-409-753 (KEL434).

One Acre Fund (OAF) was founded by Andrew Youn in 2005 for the purpose of helping to solve the chronic hunger problem in Africa. The idea is to provide the resources (seed, fertilizer, and education) necessary for African farm families to feed themselves when their land holdings are one acre or less. The business model of OAF is that of a cooperative: OAF buys resources like seeds and fertilizer in bulk at reduced prices and distributes them to small farmers who otherwise could not afford them. This case concerns the negotiation that OAF’s manager of external relations and research, Moises Postigo, conducted to buy fertilizer in the last quarter of 2007. The case provides an opportunity for students to analyze a real-world deal-making negotiation in a developing economy. A number of aspects of the context of the negotiation and the negotiation process itself make for good class discussion. Postigo did a good job preparing for the negotiation, making the case one that emphasizes proper use of negotiation planning and sensitive understanding of the negotiation environment.

Some of the elements that make for good discussion include the following: OAF was a new organization, unknown to the five major providers of fertilizer in Kenya. The negotiations were entirely conducted by cell phone. Negotiations went through stages of request for a bid, discussion with multiple bidders, selection of a provider, and negotiation. There were multiple issues, including price delivery and form of payment. Postigo was negotiating in the shadow of the possibility that the Kenyan government would start selling subsidized fertilizer to small farmers.

Brett, Jeanne, Lauren Pilcher and Lara Christina Sell. 2011. A New Approach to China: Google and Censorship in the Chinese Market. Case 5-211-255 (KEL590).

The first across-the-table negotiation between Google and China concluded successfully in 2006, when Google received a license to establish a local domain (google.cn) targeted at Chinese Internet users and not subject to the “Great Firewall”. During these negotiations both Google and the Chinese government struggled to reach an outcome that would be acceptable to their constituents. Google was caught between pleasing its shareholders and preserving its reputation for free access to information, while China was balancing the desire for cutting-edge search technology and the concern that liberal access to information would undermine its political-economic model. In the end, the negotiation resulted in Google operating two domains in China: Google.com and Google.cn. On the .cn website, Google complied with Chinese legislation through self-censoring. Google’s search market share in China grew to about 36 percent at the end of 2009.
In early 2010, Google announced that its corporate infrastructure had been the target of a series of China-based cyber attacks and accused the Chinese government of attempting to further limit free speech on the web. These incidents led to a public conflict and private negotiations between Google and the Chinese government, which culminated in July 2010 when the Chinese government renewed the google.cn license knowing that Google was redirecting all Chinese customers search to its google.hk.com site This case concerns the changes in Google and the Chinese government’s environment that led to Google withdrawing services from google.cn and the Chinese government saving face by renewing the google.cn license.
Students will learn that across-the-table negotiations are often preceded by internal negotiations, based on conflicting interests within one party. The case is based on the publicly reported events surrounding two series of negotiations between the U.S. technology giant Google and the Chinese Government regarding Google’s license in China.

Brett, Jeanne and Christopher D Grogan. 2006. Google and the Government of China: A Case Study in Cross-Cultural Negotiations. Case 5-406-752 (KEL242).

This case is based on the negotiation between Google and the Chinese government to allow access by Chinese citizens to a high-speed Chinese version of the Google search engine. In order to reach agreement with the Chinese government, Google had to agree to allow the government to censor access to some sites turned up by Google’s search engine. In agreeing, Google compromised its open access policy. There were inquiries into the agreement by the U.S. Congress and some outcry from U.S. citizens.

The learning objectives of the case include:
(1) Learning how to analyze a negotiation from the perspectives of each of the parties when one party is a government and the other a private-sector organization. What motivates each party to come to the negotiation table and to reach an agreement? A subpoint here is the difference between short-term and longer-term interests.
(2) Addressing the difficulties of balancing business ethics and financial objectives. What does it mean to be ethical in a for-profit business environment? At what point do ethical considerations outweigh financial ones? How do you make those choices? Are there creative ways to get around ethical situations?
(3) Understanding the long-term effects of short-term actions. Was Google’s subsequent action to notify its Chinese users whenever their searches had been filtered, which apparently came as a surprise to the Chinese government, ethical? Wise? What are the long-term implications of causing a party to lose face?

Brett, Jeanne. 1983. Grievance Meditation in the Coal Industry: A Field Experiment. Industrial and labor Relations Review. 37(1): 49-69.

This article describes an experiment in the mediation of grievances that recently took place during two six-month periods in four districts of the United Mine Workers of America. Eighty-nine percent of the 153 grievances taken to mediation during the experiment were resolved before arbitration. This success rate did not appear to be influenced by whether one or both parties had to consent to take a grievance to mediation, or by the identity of the mediator or the nature of the issue, although no discharge grievances were mediated in the experiment. Instead, the key to settlement appeared to be the parties' willingness to negotiate. Cost savings attributable to mediating instead of arbitrating the 153 cases were nearly $100,000, and the average grievance was resolved three months sooner in mediation than it would have been had it gone to arbitration. Most of the participants in the experiment had favorable attitudes toward the process, regardless of the outcome of their particular case.

Brett, Jeanne. 2007. Negotiating Globally: How to Negotiate Deals, Resolve Disputes, and Make Decisions across Cultural Boundaries. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2nd ed.

Negotiating Globally , 2007 Jossey Bass When it was first published in 2001, Negotiating Globally quickly became the basic reference for managers who needed to learn how to negotiate successfully across boundaries of national culture. This thoroughly revised and expanded second edition preserves the structure of the acclaimed first edition and improves upon it, making it even easier to learn how to navigate national culture when negotiating deals, resolving disputes, and making decisions in teams. Rather than offering country-specific protocol and customs, Negotiating Globally provides a general framework to help negotiators anticipate and manage cultural differences. This new edition incorporates the lessons of the latest research with new emphasis on executing a negotiation strategy and negotiating conflict in multicultural teams. The well received chapter on government at and around the table has been expanded and updated with new examples that span the globe. In this comprehensive resource, Jeanne M. Brett describes how to develop a negotiation planning document and shows how to execute the plan. She provides a model that explains how the cultural environment affects negotiators’ interests, priorities, and strategies. She provides benchmarks for distinguishing good deals from poor ones and good negotiators from poor ones. The book explains how resolving disputes is different from making deals and how negotiation strategy can be used in multi-cultural teams. Negotiating Globally challenges negotiators to expand their repertoire of strategies so that they will be able to close deals, resolve disputes, and get teams to make decisions regardless of the cultures represented at the table. This new edition includes a CD-ROM that contains illustrative case studies based on real global negotiations. There is, in addition, a complete online Instructor’s Guide with teaching notes, course outlines, and advice for what experiential negotiation exercises to use to teach the principles underlying each chapter located at www.wiley.com/college . The Author Jeanne M. Brett is the DeWitt W. Buchanan Jr. Distinguished Professor of Dispute Resolution and Organizations at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, where she is also the director and a founding member of the Dispute Resolution Research Center. Brett is the also an author of the award-winning Getting Disputes Resolved: Designing Systems to Cut the Costs of Conflict . Brett has won many awards for her scholarship and teaching including most recently the International Association for conflict Management’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

Brett, Jeanne, Katherine Nelson and Nicole Tilzer. 2009. Negotiating for Fertilizer. Case 5-409-753 (KEL434).

One Acre Fund (OAF) was founded by Andrew Youn in 2005 for the purpose of helping to solve the chronic hunger problem in Africa. The idea is to provide the resources (seed, fertilizer, and education) necessary for African farm families to feed themselves when their land holdings are one acre or less. The business model of OAF is that of a cooperative: OAF buys resources like seeds and fertilizer in bulk at reduced prices and distributes them to small farmers who otherwise could not afford them. This case concerns the negotiation that OAF’s manager of external relations and research, Moises Postigo, conducted to buy fertilizer in the last quarter of 2007. The case provides an opportunity for students to analyze a real-world deal-making negotiation in a developing economy. A number of aspects of the context of the negotiation and the negotiation process itself make for good class discussion. Postigo did a good job preparing for the negotiation, making the case one that emphasizes proper use of negotiation planning and sensitive understanding of the negotiation environment.

Some of the elements that make for good discussion include the following: OAF was a new organization, unknown to the five major providers of fertilizer in Kenya. The negotiations were entirely conducted by cell phone. Negotiations went through stages of request for a bid, discussion with multiple bidders, selection of a provider, and negotiation. There were multiple issues, including price delivery and form of payment. Postigo was negotiating in the shadow of the possibility that the Kenyan government would start selling subsidized fertilizer to small farmers.

Brett, Jeanne, Lauren Pilcher and Lara Christina Sell. 2011. A New Approach to China: Google and Censorship in the Chinese Market. Case 5-211-255 (KEL590).

The first across-the-table negotiation between Google and China concluded successfully in 2006, when Google received a license to establish a local domain (google.cn) targeted at Chinese Internet users and not subject to the “Great Firewall”. During these negotiations both Google and the Chinese government struggled to reach an outcome that would be acceptable to their constituents. Google was caught between pleasing its shareholders and preserving its reputation for free access to information, while China was balancing the desire for cutting-edge search technology and the concern that liberal access to information would undermine its political-economic model. In the end, the negotiation resulted in Google operating two domains in China: Google.com and Google.cn. On the .cn website, Google complied with Chinese legislation through self-censoring. Google’s search market share in China grew to about 36 percent at the end of 2009.
In early 2010, Google announced that its corporate infrastructure had been the target of a series of China-based cyber attacks and accused the Chinese government of attempting to further limit free speech on the web. These incidents led to a public conflict and private negotiations between Google and the Chinese government, which culminated in July 2010 when the Chinese government renewed the google.cn license knowing that Google was redirecting all Chinese customers search to its google.hk.com site This case concerns the changes in Google and the Chinese government’s environment that led to Google withdrawing services from google.cn and the Chinese government saving face by renewing the google.cn license.
Students will learn that across-the-table negotiations are often preceded by internal negotiations, based on conflicting interests within one party. The case is based on the publicly reported events surrounding two series of negotiations between the U.S. technology giant Google and the Chinese Government regarding Google’s license in China.

Brett, Jeanne and Christopher D Grogan. 2006. Google and the Government of China: A Case Study in Cross-Cultural Negotiations. Case 5-406-752 (KEL242).

This case is based on the negotiation between Google and the Chinese government to allow access by Chinese citizens to a high-speed Chinese version of the Google search engine. In order to reach agreement with the Chinese government, Google had to agree to allow the government to censor access to some sites turned up by Google’s search engine. In agreeing, Google compromised its open access policy. There were inquiries into the agreement by the U.S. Congress and some outcry from U.S. citizens.

The learning objectives of the case include:
(1) Learning how to analyze a negotiation from the perspectives of each of the parties when one party is a government and the other a private-sector organization. What motivates each party to come to the negotiation table and to reach an agreement? A subpoint here is the difference between short-term and longer-term interests.
(2) Addressing the difficulties of balancing business ethics and financial objectives. What does it mean to be ethical in a for-profit business environment? At what point do ethical considerations outweigh financial ones? How do you make those choices? Are there creative ways to get around ethical situations?
(3) Understanding the long-term effects of short-term actions. Was Google’s subsequent action to notify its Chinese users whenever their searches had been filtered, which apparently came as a surprise to the Chinese government, ethical? Wise? What are the long-term implications of causing a party to lose face?