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Modernthink Case Study

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Negative Experience The Situation Setting the Stage During this past summer I was an intern for a small consulting firm called ModernThink. They specialize in employee engagement surveys, especially focusing on universities. They are the company that runs all of the surveys and analyzes all the data for The Chronicle Great Colleges to Work for Survey. This survey gives national recognition to universities and colleges that have the best workplaces in a wide variety of areas from compensation/benefits to career development. The negotiation took place when a PHD candidate named Harry from one of the participating universities contacted ModernThink asking if he could have access to the school 's raw data to include in his thesis about employee …show more content…

He was heavily invested in his thesis and saw ModernThink’s data as the best way to prove his assertion. This was made very clear in the way that he interacted with me throughout the process of getting management’s approval to give him his university’s raw data . During this time Harry was using a very cooperative tactic in an attempt to encourage a deal.When signs started to point towards a deal not being made his emotions drastically changed more towards competitive tactics due to the increase of negative emotions he was feeling towards ModernThink because of their lack of interest in making a deal with him. By the end of the negotiation the Harry was mainly expressing anger because he was realizing that he was not going to be receiving the …show more content…

ModernThink decided not to give him the raw data that he asked for due to it being a core competency of the company and did not want anyone to see how they organize their data. I could have tried to get his institution to allow him to see the reports that they purchased or allowed him to purchase other reports. This could have greatly assisted Harry without risking ModernThink’s competitive advantage in any way. Additionally, throughout the negotiation I tried to be as supportive of Harry’s interests to the extent that limited my ability to focus on the interests of the company that I was working for. I could have utilized a little more perspective taking to better understand why my superiors had the positions they did. I only utilized perspective taking to better understand where Harry was coming from. This made me favor too much to Harry which limited the solutions that I thought of that would have equally benefited both Harry and ModernThink. This type of negotiation needed a high level of understanding of the interests of both parties in order to effectively make a deal between them. By not doing this to its full potential ultimately assisted in the decision of not making a

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