Tug of War: The Tension Concept and the Art of International Negotiation - Softcover

English, Tony

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1863356738 ISBN 13: 9781863356732

Publisher: Common Ground Publishing, 2010

Synopsis

Tug of War is a ground-breaking exploration of the negotiator as a flexible, creative manager of tensions extracted from ongoing informational chaos. The book relates the process and form of negotiation to fundamental aspects of human behaviour and is probably the first work to present a universal theory of negotiation.

Tony English wrote Tug of War for negotiation experts and others who might be interested in a long-overdue fresh concept of negotiation, and an analytical method which draws on the literature of negotiation but delves into many other realms, including international relations, fine arts, philosophy, management, games, anthropology and psychology. The book focuses on international negotiation but is relevant to negotiation in general. Tony interviewed many veteran negotiators in diplomacy, hostage release and business. He weaves the rich character, skills and experience of individual veterans into the book, and presents two cases in fine detail. The informants include: Hugh Davies, lead British negotiator for the return of Hong Kong to China; Sir Alan Donald, British Ambassador to China and several other countries; Terry Waite, of Beirut kidnap fame; Meg McDonald, Australian Ambassador for the Environment and team leader for the greenhouse gas negotiations at Kyoto; Malcolm Lyon, Australia's lead negotiator for the Torres Strait Treaty with Papua New Guinea; Don Kenyon, Australian Ambassador to Belgium, Luxembourg and the European Union, and former Chairman of the WTO's Dispute Settlement Body; Doug Anderson, Managing Director of P & O Ports; Sam Passow, Research Director of London's Centre for Dispute Resolution; Geoff Goon, a major exporter of fruit and vegetables from Australia to the Middle East; Steven Hochman and Kirk Wolcott, dispute resolution advisers to President Jimmy Carter; and a few others who needed anonymity. Tony also draws on his own experience in several countries.

At the core of the book is the tension, which comprises complementary phenomena, both physical and abstract, that compete for influence over our behaviour as we are bombarded with chaotic information. Profuse forces generate dynamic tensions. Tony presents a model of negotiation context that comprises tensions and the forces that constantly generate and regenerate them. Expert negotiators are expert tension managers who thrive on the need to recognize and manage constant change in the negotiation context; they have high 'contextual intelligence', a variation on Robert Sternberg's concept of Successful Intelligence in cognitive psychology. Tony links contextual intelligence with seven traits identified in his veterans. Some writers refer to the tension but neglect its nuances and miss its generic value in analyzing negotiations and other human activity as people try to impose manageable order on chaos. We are all tension managers, whether or not we are aware of it.
Tug of War is included in a list of 102 readings compiled by the US Government's Interagency Alternative Dispute Resolution Working Group. This high-power group was established by Presidential Memorandum on May 1, 1998, to assist federal agencies to develop and implement ADR programs. The Working Group's members are ADR professionals in agencies across the Federal Government.  The President appointed the Attorney General to lead the group.

Mr Hugh Davies, for five years the Lead British Negotiator for the return of Hong Kong to China, describes Tug of War as "a great work".  (Email to the author.)

About this title

From the Author:

Discussion of my book and its relationship to a much more recent work by another author used to be available on the dedicated public Facebook page for Tug of War: The Tension Concept and the Art of International Negotiation. Without explanation or warning, most of the discussion series and reader comments have been removed.

Published early in 2010, my book is clearly the first to depict the negotiator as a flexible, creative manager of tensions extracted from ongoing informational chaos. The book elaborates on the 'managing chaos and thriving on uncertainty' theme that is in my publications as far back as 2002, and well before that in my teaching. Also see detailed, lengthy comments on my book in Dr Andrew Whitehead's Amazon review of Michael Wheeler's The Art of Negotiation: How to Improvise Agreement in a Chaotic World (2013). The Facebook posts that have mysteriously disappeared presented in detail my claim to be the first writer to depict the negotiator as a creative, flexible manager of informational chaos. This is a fact, despite different treatment of the theme developed independently by Wheeler for his much later book. 

More evidence of originality here, from 1999: "Certainly from the point of view of public policy, the notion that a primary object for the negotiator is extracting order from a chaos of information is absolutely spot on. This is true for making sense of the negotiation [including] one's own position and objectives. For the kind of international issues which have preoccupied me, the effect of any such approach is increasingly contingent on the ability to effectively package up and communicate any negotiating position to a wide range of actors in the domestic and international community. I had not necessarily thought of this in terms of identifying 'tensions', but the more I have now thought through it after reading your letter, the more I think that this is a matter of semantics." Email, May 1999, from Ms Meg McDonald, Deputy Chief of Mission, Australian Embassy, Washington; former Australian Ambassador for the Environment; lead negotiator for the Kyoto Greenhouse Gases Protocol.

Two pages of corrections and addenda are available in JPEG format on the Facebook page for Tug of War. The changes are based mainly on reader feedback. Most are minor production glitches; one is a significant redefinition.

Review:

"The book is a learned text that provides food for thought for all of us who may be involved in complex negotiations.  Tony likens the negotiator to a 'tension manager' and this metaphor brings meaning to mediators and negotiators. While he argues that negotiation 'is just another human activity', he outlines the need to order the sometimes chaotic nature of negotiations. By using systematic means for discovering significant tensions we can better understand what may be the underlying causes of those tensions. The book is very much about the stories of veteran diplomats and negotiators involved in international negotiations and makes very interesting reading. We are also introduced to the intrigue of hostage-taking, blackmail and extortion.  Tension management is a reasonable way to manage the chaos of influences on us." Dr Paul Gibson, ADR specialist and Senior Fellow of the Corporate Directors' Association of Australia. In 'Update', magazine of LEADR, the peak body for ADR professionals in Australia and New Zealand.

About this edition

• Publisher: Common Ground Publishing
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 1863356738
• ISBN 13: 9781863356732
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 312