ABSTRACT
Negotiations are a form of strategic interaction in which a deliberate goal is to reach an agreement or a compromise between parties' interests. A quintessential part of a negotiation is a bargaining sequence in which a party formulates a position and a recipient aligns or misaligns with it. These bargaining sequences are indeed the focus point of negotiations. However, in practice most of the work in negotiations precedes or follows bargaining sequences. Although parties share a common goal, their opposing interests separate them. Consequently, negotiations amount to extended problem-solving activities whose components can be scrutinized through CA. Negotiators must pay special attention to entries to and exits from proposals in which new dimensions of relevance are brought up: entries must prepare a common ground between opposing parties in order to establish a degree of alignment to launch the bargaining process, while in the post-proposal stage negotiators may need to reconsider their positions to keep the negotiation process working. Negotiations differ from ordinary, mundane interactions in various ways; for example, some negotiations are organized formally so as to avoid the emergence of arguments, etc.
