Kudos to BLM for this excellent document .. at a glance, it is a comprehensive overview of the landscape of collaboration and conflict resolution. The photos included are excellent also. The below section talks about the competitive style of negotiation, thoughts which are similar to what I said in this morning’s post but expressed way more articulately.
Negotiators who use a competitive approach aggressively advocate for their position and are disinclined to accept any agreement other than that which satisfies their preconceived goals. Using this approach, the objective is to “win,” if need be, at the expense of other parties. For natural resources issues, competitive approaches can lead to intractability as negotiators focused on winning their positions may miss opportunities for discretion, compromise, or common interests, thus unnecessarily escalating a dispute to litigation or appeal.
The competitive approach is also less likely to take into account preservation of the relationship between the negotiating parties. As such, while competitive negotiators initially may succeed in winning their positions, the approach quickly becomes less effective in future negotiations with the same parties. In managing public lands and resources for multiple-use, the BLM often is in a position to negotiate with the same stakeholders multiple times in multiple situations. Competitive approaches from either the Bureau or stakeholders can create an adversarial relationship, thus decreasing the potential for success in future negotiations.
Interesting that these “place-based forest bills” are more on the competitive negotiations models than on collaboration.