In a changing world, parties increasingly find themselves in disputes within deeply interconnected relationships: companies sharing the same supply chain, states sharing the same water basin, competitors who will continue to coexist in the same market. In this landscape, the real test of a settlement is not simply ending the disagreement. The party across the table may at times be a rival, even an adversary; but what matters is being able to leave that table having created something entirely new, a joint value, out of the dispute itself.
Two Distinct Skills: Creating Value and Claiming Value
This distinction rests on a well established framework in negotiation theory. David Lax and James Sebenius, in The Manager as Negotiator, divide negotiation into two distinct skills that exist in tension with one another: creating value and claiming value. Value creation aims to grow the available resource by surfacing the parties’ shared interests; value claiming aims to maximise one’s own share of that resource, whether it has grown or stayed the same. Lax and Sebenius call this the negotiator’s dilemma: the cooperative posture required to create value and the competitive posture required to claim it substantially undermine one another.
The resolution of this dilemma lies not in sacrificing one for the other, but in being able to pursue both, in the right sequence and the right measure. As Lax and Sebenius emphasise, the real goal is to create all possible value jointly, then claim a fair share of it, while also protecting oneself against the other side’s unilateral value claiming.
Even Facing a Rival: The Priority Perspective Young People Should Be Given
This is exactly where the priority reflex that international mediation and negotiation training aims to instill in young people comes into play. The party across the table may be a rival, even a party to a tense relationship; the goal of the training is not to change that. The goal is for the parties, despite this reality, to build a value that did not previously exist, together, by surfacing underlying interests rather than simply defending positions. The measure of success is not who extracted more concessions, but whether, once the parties rise from the table, a value now exists that did not exist before the dispute began.
This approach is also taking an increasingly prominent place in the evaluation culture of international student competitions. What is expected of competitors is not only to reach an agreement, but to produce creative solutions that read the parties’ interests correctly and grow their joint benefit. Across platforms of this kind, including the IBA-VIAC CDRC Vienna competition where ADRIstanbul has served for years as an expert assessor, the common trend observed is that participants are evaluated not on positional bargaining alone, but on interest based and creative solutions.
This Should Be at the Centre of Alternative Dispute Resolution Methods
The capacity to create joint value remains structurally limited in court proceedings. A judge or jury, as a rule, decides that one party is right and the other is wrong; this decision does not produce new value between the parties, it merely redistributes what already exists. Alternative dispute resolution methods such as mediation, facilitation, and negotiation, by contrast, provide exactly the conditions value creation requires: confidentiality allows the parties to disclose their real interests without hesitation; flexibility allows the negotiation of creative solutions the court cannot offer, such as joint investment, staged payment plans, or forward looking cooperation commitments; and the presence of a neutral third party helps the parties focus on a joint solution rather than on each other.
For this reason, the success of alternative dispute resolution methods should be measured not only by whether an agreement was reached, but by whether that agreement also brought the parties a value that did not exist before the dispute. This measure is the essential element that separates the method’s real added value from the court process.
Creating Joint Value as a System
The capacity to create joint value is not a one off technique; it should be treated as a system that needs to be developed, expanded, and transformed over time. This system should begin to be designed not at the moment a dispute starts, but as the relationship between the parties is being established: contract provisions, institutional cooperation frameworks, and long term partnership models should build in mechanisms that leave room for joint value creation.
This perspective becomes especially decisive where the parties’ relationship will continue after the dispute ends, that is, in transboundary water basins, long term commercial partnerships, or inter institutional cooperation. The purpose of a settlement should not only be to close the disagreement, but to strengthen the relationship between the parties with a capacity to produce value that was not previously possible.
Which Sustainable Development Goals Does This Article Support?
- SDG 16, Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions: Handling disputes on productive rather than destructive ground.
- SDG 17, Partnerships for the Goals: Developing cooperation models that can turn differing interests into joint value.
- SDG 4, Quality Education: Passing interest based negotiation and joint value creation skills on to young generations through applied training.
Sources
- Lax, D. A. and Sebenius, J. K. (1986) The Manager as Negotiator: Bargaining for Cooperation and Competitive Gain.
- Fisher, R. and Ury, W. (1981) Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In.
- Program on Negotiation, Harvard Law School, What are Integrative Negotiations? – pon.harvard.edu
