INTRODUCTION

Every one of us, in all aspects of our lives, has to negotiate. We do it over salary, when we buy things, in our personal lives, as part of our jobs; and we see it going on in world affairs where the stakes can sometimes be scarily high. We are familiar with what happens in negotiation: we take a position, the other side takes one and then both sides argue until a compromise is reached.

There is a wonderful little book called Getting to Yes (Fisher and Ury, 1981), based on work done at Harvard. This short book presents a method called principled negotiation or negotiation on the merits. The method has as its objective to produce a wise agreement. A wise agreement is defined as "one which meets the legitimate interests of each side to the extent possible, resolves conflicting interests fairly , is durable, and takes community interests into account."