By Charles-Henri Besseyre des Horts, Professor at the Management and Human Resources department of HEC.

Breakthrough International Negotiation may appear incongruous in a publication like Manageris that is devoted to analyzing management books. After all, what do diplomatic negotiations like those that took place in the nineties between the U.S. and North Korea on the latter’s nuclear program have to do with the business world? The chosen subtitle, “How great negotiators transformed the world’s toughest post-Cold War conflicts”, certainly does not inspire corporate leaders to read the book. So why should this book be on the reading list of company executives, particularly those involved in international negotiations?

The fascination of this book lies in its extremely refined and detailed analyses of the memorable international tension and subsequent talks of the nineties. In the first half of the book, the authors use the 1993-1994 nuclear negotiations between the U.S. and North Korea to outline their general negotiation model. In the second half, this model is further refined using three real-life international negotiations, i.e. those between Israel and the PLO resulting in the signature of the Oslo agreement in 1993, those used to build a coalition against Iraq in 1991, and those ending the war in Bosnia in 1996.

This book offers theoretical analysis tools that can be applied to many contexts, including business negotiations. For example, reading the application of the famous “prisoner’s dilemma” (pp. 60-67) is particularly helpful to understand the potential barriers to agreement. Understanding these analysis tools would seem critical for managers who want to see concrete negotiation situations from a more objective viewpoint.

Above all, company leaders will find a gold mine of excellent, practical advice in this book, particularly in the chapters dedicated to a detailed analysis of the general principles. In the chapter devoted to conflict management, for example, the distinction between the role of facilitator, mediator and arbitrator is particularly enlightening in terms of understanding the situations in which third parties should be involved.

This is much more than a management book, to the extent that the provided tools and principles can be used to analyze any type of negotiation. In short, this book offers a theoretical and practical guide to help company leaders, researchers and consultants understand and influence the subtle mechanisms of negotiation, particularly in international contexts – a critical ability in an environment where stakeholders play an increasingly preponderant role.

Charles-Henri Besseyre des Horts has been Professor at the Management and Human Resources department of HEC since 1990. He has published many articles and several books. He consults and teaches at many international public- and private-sector organizations (including ABN Amro, Bull, Danone, Schneider Electric, France Telecom, etc.).

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