David Laws

Participants

The workshop is open to Master’s students in programmes within the social sciences and related disciplines at the GSSS and at other universities in the Netherlands. 

Please note that the number of places is limited.

Costs

For students registered for a Master’s programme at a Dutch university, the course is free of charge. 

Workshop content

The Workshop on Negotiation and Conflict Resolution starts from the observation that the world of public officials, citizens, entrepreneurs, consultants, and other professionals is marked by interdependence, by fragmented sources of power, and by an uncertain future. In this unruly world, the sources of understanding and stability are often provisional and the ability to learn and to manage change is at a premium. The diversity of society contributes to conflicts over goals, interests, and frames of reference. These characteristics create an ongoing need for the ability to craft stable agreements that advance interests, build trust, and construct understanding in complex and unstable environments. They create a need for negotiation.

Negotiation, in this light, is about the management of interdependence. It raises a series of questions that cut across the boundary between theory and practice. This creates a rationale for a teaching format that is both hands-on and theoretically oriented.  The workshop provides this.  Participants learn about negotiation by developing their skills in role-play exercises.  Reflection on these experiences is linked to a systematic body of theory about what it means to negotiate and to negotiate well.

The organisation of the workshop addresses two goals:

• It will help you develop your understanding of negotiation in relation to themes like strategic action, rationality, ethics, social psychology, decision analysis, organisational behaviour and develop your ability to employ these concepts to analyse empirical cases.
• The course will also help you develop skills that will make you a better negotiator. It will prepare you to diagnose conflict, negotiate purposefully and thoughtfully, and critically evaluate outcomes and experience. 

Registration