ABSTRACT
“Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement” (BATNA) was first coined by negotiation researchers Roger Fisher and William Ury who worked on the Harvard Negotiation Project. However, whereas the term fall-back infers that the agreement reached may be sub-optimal, the BATNA is viewed as an equally good alternative to reaching a mutually acceptable settlement. The basic premise is that a negotiator should not accept a worse resolution than their BATNA. The willingness of a negotiator to break off a negotiation will allow them to adopt a firmer stance during the bidding phase of the negotiation process – in essence delivering the threat of walking away. Developed in the early 1980s, the BATNA theory appears to split academics. Many argue that it is more suited to industrial relations negotiations, whereas others promote it as a negotiation fundamental.
