Business Negotiation

Course Description

Business Negotiation offers a practical understanding of negotiation theories and concepts from a business perspective. UWF states that students differentiate and practice distributive and integrative negotiation strategies via business related role plays and cases, and that as future managers, students: 1) practice negotiation where their responsibility exceeds their authority; 2) build coalitions among different stakeholders; and 3) analyze business conflict situations and select strategies to resolve differences.

Within the SCNS taxonomy, MAN is the Management prefix. The University of West Florida publishes this at 3 semester hours through the Department of Business Administration, College of Business. It is offered at approximately 10 Florida institutions.

⚠⚠ This is a practice course, and the role plays are the assessment. You will negotiate in front of other people, repeatedly, and be evaluated on it. Students who are uncomfortable with that should know it before registering — and should also know that discomfort is the reason to take it.

The first phrase in UWF's list is the most interesting thing on this page: negotiating where your responsibility exceeds your authority. That is the actual condition of most working life. You will routinely need things from people who do not report to you and are not obliged to help, and no amount of formal position substitutes for the ability to get agreement.

⚠ The core technical distinction is distributive versus integrative. Distributive bargaining divides a fixed amount — one side's gain is the other's loss. Integrative bargaining looks for trades that make both sides better off, which is possible whenever the parties value things differently. The commonest failure in negotiation is treating an integrative situation as distributive, which leaves value on the table for everyone.

Preparation is the variable that most reliably predicts outcome, and it is the part students skip. Knowing your alternatives, your reservation point, and what the other side is likely to value does more than any tactic.

⚠ The contact-hour figure is derived — the University of West Florida publishes none

UWF's catalog publishes a credit value in semester hours, the college and department, and prerequisites. It does not publish contact hours or terms of offering for any course. Every contact-hour value in a UWF guide in this repository is derived. The figure applies the standard lecture convention of 15 contact hours per credit, giving 45 hours for 3 semester hours. Confirm the meeting schedule and delivery mode with the department.

Learning Outcomes

Required Outcomes

• Describe negotiation theory and the structure of a negotiation.
• Distinguish distributive from integrative negotiation.
• Recognise when a situation is integrative rather than fixed-sum.
• Prepare systematically for a negotiation.
• Identify and improve your BATNA and estimate the other party's.
• Determine reservation points and identify the zone of possible agreement.
• Describe anchoring and framing effects and their influence on outcomes.
• Apply distributive tactics and recognise them when used against you.
• Apply integrative techniques including interest identification and trades.
• Distinguish positions from underlying interests.
• Use questioning and active listening to uncover interests.
• Describe the role of information asymmetry in negotiation.
• Describe cognitive biases affecting negotiators.
• Build and manage coalitions among stakeholders.
• Negotiate where responsibility exceeds formal authority.
• Describe multiparty negotiation and its added complexity.
• Describe cross-cultural differences in negotiation practice.
• Describe ethical boundaries and deception in negotiation.
• Analyse a business conflict and select an appropriate strategy.
• Describe third-party intervention including mediation and arbitration.
• Manage relationships and reputation across repeated negotiations.
• Reflect on and improve your own negotiating performance.

Optional Outcomes

• Apply the material to a real organisation or case study.
• Work effectively in a team with defined roles and deadlines.
• Present and defend a recommendation to a business audience.
• Use AI-assisted tools appropriately and verify their output.
• Build a portfolio artefact suitable for showing an employer.

Major Topics

Required Topics

• Negotiation theory and structure
• Distributive versus integrative negotiation
• Recognising integrative potential
• Systematic preparation
• BATNA and its improvement
• Reservation points and the ZOPA
• Anchoring and framing
• Distributive tactics and countermeasures
• Integrative techniques and trades
• Positions versus interests
• Questioning and active listening
• Information asymmetry
• Cognitive biases in negotiation
• Coalition building
• Negotiating without authority
• Multiparty negotiation
• Cross-cultural negotiation
• Ethics and deception
• Business conflict analysis
• Mediation and arbitration
• Relationships and reputation
• Reflective practice

Optional Topics

• Applied case studies and live organisations
• Team practice and role definition
• Presenting to a business audience
• AI-assisted tooling and its governance
• Portfolio development

Resources & Tools

• The text the instructor assigns — Lewicki's Essentials of Negotiation is the standard course text; Fisher and Ury's Getting to Yes is short, cheap and the most widely read book in the field.
• Malhotra and Bazerman's Negotiation Genius — the best treatment of the cognitive-bias material, and readable outside a classroom.
• The Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School (pon.harvard.edu) — substantial free material; articles, case summaries and teaching notes.
• Recording yourself, with consent — free, and the fastest way to improve. Most people are surprised by how much they talk, how quickly they concede, and how rarely they ask a question.
• A preparation template — free to build once and reuse: your interests, their likely interests, your BATNA, your reservation point, your opening, and the trades you could offer. Using one consistently is the single highest-return habit from this course.
• Salary negotiation resources — Bureau of Labor Statistics and Florida wage data are free; ⚠ this course's most immediate personal application is your own first job offer, and the compounding effect of a starting salary is substantial.
• The UWF library's business databases — included in enrolment; industry reports and practitioner sources sit behind paywalls a student already has access to, and most never find out.
• LinkedIn Learning — frequently free through UWF or a Florida public library card; strong on specific tools, weak on judgement.

Career Pathways

• General and operations manager (SOC 11-1021) — the broadest destination, and the one most graduates reach through a functional role first.
• Human resources specialist (SOC 13-1071) and human resources manager (SOC 11-3121) — the specialist role is the normal entry point; the manager role follows experience.
• Training and development specialist (SOC 13-1151) and compensation and benefits analyst (SOC 13-1141).
• Project management specialist (SOC 13-1082) — and note that project work is entered from every discipline, not only from business.
• Logistician and supply chain analyst (SOC 13-1081), purchasing agent (SOC 13-1023), operations analyst (SOC 13-1111, management analyst).
• Management trainee and rotational programmes — ⚠ these recruit on a fixed annual cycle, often a year ahead. Students who wait until spring of their final year have already missed most of them.
• ⚠ Florida employer landscape: healthcare systems (AdventHealth, Orlando Health, BayCare, Baptist, Ascension Sacred Heart in Pensacola) are among the state's largest employers and run substantial HR and operations functions; hospitality and theme parks (Disney, Universal, and the cruise lines out of Miami, Port Canaveral and Tampa) are operations-intensive at enormous scale; defence and aerospace (Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, L3Harris, and the Navy presence around Pensacola); logistics and distribution around Jacksonville and Central Florida; agriculture and food processing; and state, county and municipal government.
• Small and family business is a genuine Florida destination, not a fallback — the state has a very high rate of small business formation, and the SBDC network at Florida universities, including UWF, provides free consulting.

AI Integration

Management is being changed by AI in two distinct ways, and they need separating. The first is AI as a tool a manager uses. The second is AI as something a manager must govern — deployed in hiring, scheduling, performance evaluation and forecasting, where the consequences fall on people.

• Where AI tools genuinely help managers: drafting documents and correspondence, summarising long material, preparing meeting notes and first-draft plans, analysing survey and operational data, and rehearsing a difficult conversation before having it.
• ⚠ Where they fail: they fabricate confidently — including citations, statutes and figures; they do not know your organisation, your people, or your context; and they produce fluent text that reads as considered when nothing was considered.
• ⚠⚠⚠ Employment decisions are the highest-risk application, and this is not hypothetical. AI screening tools have been shown to reproduce and amplify bias present in historical hiring data. Under United States law the employer is liable for discriminatory outcomes regardless of whether a vendor's tool produced them, and disparate impact does not require intent. The EEOC has issued guidance specifically on this.
• ⚠⚠ Regulation is arriving and it is not uniform. Several jurisdictions now require bias auditing or candidate notification for automated employment decision tools. Where your employees and applicants are located determines what applies — not where your office is.
• Never put employee or applicant personal data into a public AI tool. Personnel records, medical information, disciplinary matters and compensation data must stay in controlled systems. This is a common and serious early-career mistake.
• ⚠ A human must own every consequential decision. "The system flagged it" is not an explanation you can give an employee, a regulator, or a court. Keep a person accountable, and be able to state the reason in plain language.
• Academic integrity: the course policy governs and policies differ. Read the syllabus, ask if unclear, and disclose what you used when asked. In a course teaching judgement, outsourcing the judgement defeats the purpose — which is a practical point, not a moral one.

Special Information

⚠⚠ A standing requirement — 60 completed hours — not a course prerequisite

• UWF publishes: "Completion of 60 hours of college course work is required prior to taking this course." That measures how far through a degree you are, not what you have studied.
• ⚠⚠ UWF uses more than one threshold in this prefix. Most MAN courses require 45 hours; MAN4280 and MAN4441 require 60; MAN3802 requires none. Do not assume the number carries across courses — read each entry.
• These are easy to overlook because they name no course and so never appear in a prerequisite chain.
• ⚠ Transfer students should confirm how their credit counts toward the total. Accepted transfer hours normally count, but dual enrolment, credit by examination and developmental coursework are treated differently by different institutions. Ask College of Business advising rather than assuming.
• Business colleges commonly layer further gates on top — admission to the major, a minimum grade point average, and a minimum grade in each core course. Confirm all of these against your own catalog year.

⚠⚠ What the evidence supports, and the traps

• Your BATNA — your best alternative to a negotiated agreement — determines your power, far more than confidence or technique. Improving your alternatives before you negotiate is more effective than anything you do at the table.
• ⚠ Anchoring works, and it works on you. First offers exert measurable pull on final outcomes even when both parties know it. Prepare your own number in advance so that theirs has something to push against.
• Most negotiators assume a fixed pie and are wrong. Parties usually value issues differently, which creates trades — and you cannot find them without asking questions. Negotiating over several issues at once rather than sequentially makes trades visible.
• ⚠⚠ The ethical boundary is real and worth deciding in advance. Puffery about preferences is generally accepted; misrepresenting a material fact can be fraud, with legal consequences. Decide your standard before you are under pressure, not during.
• Reputation outlasts any single deal. Most business negotiation is repeated with the same counterparties, and a reputation for sharp practice raises the cost of every future negotiation.
• ⚠ Silence is a technique and most people cannot tolerate it. Learning to make an offer and stop talking is unglamorous, uncomfortable, and effective.

⚠ Offered concurrently with the graduate MAN5446

• UWF teaches this course alongside its graduate counterpart, MAN5446, with graduate students assigned additional work.
• ⚠ The undergraduate section is not a lighter course. Lectures, readings and examinations are shared; what differs is the extra assignment load on the graduate side. Expect graduate pace.
• This is useful if you are considering an MBA or a graduate HR programme — it is an honest preview of the level, and the instructor is someone who could later write your reference.

Certifications and credentials worth knowing about

• Human resources: SHRM-CP (Society for Human Resource Management) and PHR (HRCI) are the two entry-level credentials. ⚠ SHRM-CP can be sat by students in their final year at SHRM-aligned programmes, and student membership is inexpensive — ask the College of Business whether UWF's HR curriculum is SHRM-aligned, because it changes your eligibility timing.
• Project management: CAPM is designed for people without project experience and is the realistic student credential; PMP requires documented leading experience and comes later. PMI student membership substantially reduces the exam cost.
• Operations and supply chain: APICS/ASCM CPIM and CSCP, and ISM's CPSM for purchasing. Six Sigma Green Belt is widely recognised in manufacturing and healthcare operations.
• ⚠ A degree and a certification do different jobs. The degree is durable; certifications are current, specific, and expire. Employers ask for both and neither substitutes for the other.
• Experience beats both for most of these roles. An internship, a student organisation officer post, or a real project you can describe outperforms a certification with no practice behind it — and SHRM and PMI both run student chapters worth joining.

Transfer, articulation, and how Florida course levels work

In the Florida Statewide Course Numbering System the first digit is the level: 1 and 2 are lower division, 3 and 4 upper division, 5 and above graduate. ⚠ A lower-division course generally cannot satisfy an upper-division requirement — which matters in this prefix, where MAN2021 and MAN3025 both introduce management and only the second is upper division.

⚠⚠ Business programmes add a layer SCNS does not. Many Florida business colleges are AACSB accredited, and AACSB programmes commonly limit how much upper-division business coursework may transfer in — frequently requiring a substantial share to be taken in residence. A course can articulate under SCNS and still not count toward the major. Check the receiving programme's residency rule before relying on a transfer.

⚠ UWF states of its BSBA capstone that it "must be taken at UWF." Residency rules of that kind are common in business programmes and are worth checking early, because they cannot be worked around late.

Course format and position in the curriculum

• Lecture with case analysis, team project work, and written and oral reporting. ⚠ Management courses are graded substantially on communication, which surprises students who expected a quantitative business course.
• ⚠ No fee notices appear anywhere in the MAN prefix, and no "permission is required" marking except on the BSBA capstone. Enrolment is gated by standing and by MAN3301.
• Ask about delivery mode. UWF offers substantial online provision in the College of Business, and an online section of a team-based course demands more self-management, not less.
• UWF publishes no contact hours or terms of offering. A course offered in one term only will delay a sequence by a full year if missed — confirm with the department.

MAN4441 is 3 semester hours at the University of West Florida.