The Wrong Mental Image of Settlement
Christopher Honeyman
This article was originally published in Negotiation
Journal, January 2001. It is available here as an Adobe Acrobat (*.pdf) file.
(from the Journal's description): Negotiation participants
usually think of "settlement" as the official end of a conflict; the author
points out that this mental image is inaccurate in many situations, where a settlement is
followed by additional eruptions of conflict. He uses the recent Good Friday peace accord
in Northern Ireland as an example of the continuing nature of many conflicts; theorizes as
to why we have this incorrect mental image in general; and suggests ways we can present a
more accurate representation of a conflict’s life cycle.
What if there is a pervasive error in the mental map of negotiations
that most people — the public, negotiators, even mediators — are using? I have
come to believe that most of us are carrying around a mental image of what
"settlement" looks like — and that it’s a distorted image....
Full article (91 KB)
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