Negotiation Controlling: Enhancing Negotiation Performance with Past Data

In science as well as in practice, the topic of negotiation controlling, comprising the planning, comparing, and managing of negotiations by deriving implications from past negotiation results for future nego¬tiations, has so far received little attention. While companies certainly monitor their results, this type of control cannot be equated with con¬trolling in the original sense. Learning from negotiations or any type of negotiation control has so far only been practiced or researched in a qualitative, highly individualized way. Therefore, we deduce from the functions of business controlling that negotiation performance should be enhanced by providing averages and best and worst results of past negotiations. Based on this knowledge, nego¬tiators could then derive important shots for future negotiations. An experiment was conducted to test this assumption.