NEGOTIATING TRANSNATIONAL AGREEMENTSLearning Reflection Journal

Student ID: s3210097Student name: Nguyen Bao QuanLecturer: Mr. Henry Webb

PREFACE

Negotiating Transnational Agreements is a course who help the students have an overview

about how to produce an agreement upon matters or crafting same satisfaction from various

interests of many parties. Shortly, through this reflection (or you can consider it as a diary of mine

throughout my experience of utmost interesting class in the university), I hope that the readers can

have a general idea about something so-called Negotiation – a special skill that we use every day in

our life in any case.

… Once again, I am really grateful to Mr. Henry Webb for your time through 13 weeks of this

course!

And thanks a lot to University of Google for supplying images to my Reflection!

Chapter I

THE BEGINNINGIn the beginning was the secret brain.

The brain was celled and soldered in the thoughtDylan Thomas

After a long semester break, I came back to university with utmost eagerness for interesting

courses ahead. At last, it came - Week 1’s Wednesday, the first NTA class begun in 9.00 AM. How did

I feel at that time? I hoped that the experience in Ben Thanh market, Saigon Square can help me to

deal with any tough guys who want to compete with me. Actually, in those shopping places, the

experience as well as skillful conversation can help you own goods with cheaper prices.

Pride, unafraid feeling fulfilled my soul when I looked around the classroom. I did not deny,

however, some worried feeling about this course because of Mr. Henry Webb. As all of RMIT

students know, Mr. Henry Webb is really famous for his position as coordinator of Commercial Law

– one of the most difficult subject. I did not have any idea if this course required some “implement

terms, or promissory estoppels”! I talked to myself “I will not let any painful thing happen as it used

to be in my Commercial Law course!”.

“A decision-making process by which two or more parties attempt to reach an agreement on

how to allocate scarce resources.” Some very first theory of Negotiation – not so much for first day

and it seemed a bit easy for us. And in this first class, I realized the term of this course: Negotiating

Transnational Agreements. It was not like I used to think before, Transnational (some

oversea/abroad/out-of-territory thing) not Transactional (a more-likely-business term).

Additionally, I realized that

Negotiating is not just only to bargain with

some shopkeepers. There are many

methods to help me negotiate scientifically

in suitable cases. My missions are applying

theory in the right way, combining with my

experience in brain and COME TO CLASS ON

TIME (this is the most important and

toughest task, in my point of view!). The most

wonderful thing in this course is that there will

be no any final examination to make me feel unpeaceful in the end of the semester.

At the end of the first class, I had chance to test my ability through a small negotiation about

two real estate agents. I represented for Mr. Baker who wanted to expand his land for building a

good kitchen place. With my confidence, it was not hard for me to deal a good agreement according

to my approach – a land lot with only $6,500 while my client prepared $20,000 for that lot.

Nevertheless, in the process of negotiation, I sometime got stuck and confused because of lacking of

information. I could not estimate the right value of Appleton’s lot at that moment. And finally, we

finished but it still left in my head a lot of feeling: “Was I right? Could I do it better? Was it right

method for dealing with such case?”. After all, I decided not to think much since this was just only

the first class of mine. Maybe in the next weeks ahead, I could improve my knowledge as well as

techniques to own those situations.

In the end, we had a small questionnaire about our characteristics. This could be a

standards to categorize us in different negotiating groups. The questions were realistic and funny.

Chapter II

THE SECOND COMINGSurely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at handWilliam Butler Yeats

Week 2 came, the class begun with tasks for Week 3. Of course, we needed to read Getting to

Yes textbook which has been existing since 1981; however, it is still the main compass for any

Negotiation course all over the world. Impressively, the first title of this book is National Bestseller.

Mr. Henry Webb then evaluated the last negotiation and from that review, I concluded a lot of useful

lessons.

Firstly, because we did not know the confidential facts of the other side, we should make

some first steps. Preparing and thinking about the first price to offer was really important. Coming

back to my experience when I walked along through clothing shops in Saigon Square or Ben Thanh

market, when a guy offered me a price for a t-shirt – for example – 150.000 VND. I often reduced the

price to the reasonably lowest figure (in my opinion) – sometime it could be a half: 75.000 VND.

After that, if the shopkeeper determined remaining the same price, I could think to increase a bit

such as 80.000 VND or 85.000 VND so as to reach agreement.

In the case of Appleton v. Baker, it was a bit similar to

shopping clothes. When Mr. Henry Webb reviewed it, I realized how

to resolve the confuse of lacking data. Simply, we could request that

party show the offer first. In the role of Baker’s lawyer, I could have

told my friend: “What is your offer for this land?”, it was alike the

situation when I asked the shopkeeper: “How much is this t-shirt?”.

This could be the smartest move.

We then were categorized according to our characteristics

mentioned in the questionnaire last week. There were five groups of

negotiating styles: Shark, Ant, Owl, Teddy Bear and Turtle. I

belonged to Turtle group which avoided conflicts and felt helpless!

It was a bit right from me since I usually did not want to argue with

other people. Whenever there was argument, I walked away and

thought about it later. However, not always did I hide myself and withdraw from conflicts. Instead, I

I’m a cute Turtle guy who do not want to attack

anyone!

tried to conciliate altogether with the others. Hence, in this case, I thought that I was an Owl style

man instead of Turtle.

I was please with my teammate, most of them were my friends in previous classes. I hoped

that my team can work well in next exercises.

The first official lecture was conducted and we were taught about basic Negotiation

concepts. In the lesson, I specially noticed about the BATNA, and Managing Emotion. BATNA (Best

Alternative To the Negotiated Agreements) meant that you needed to think and be innovative in

creating options for negotiation – just only one word but it contained a lot of contents to learn.

Managing Emotion was completely important to avoid bursting out your anger since there were

other issues needed negotiating beside business matters. It could be the war between two

countries, hostages vs. terrorists, etc. One mistake in controlling the situation could lead to negative

result.

The Sally Soprano was the negotiating exercise for Week 2. After forming the team, this

could be the first chance to test the ability of co-working among members as well as testing the

ability of absorbing basic negotiating knowledge.

The negotiation was carried out quite well. There was not much thing to say because we just

talked about an opera show and the salary in Lyric Opera for our client – Sally Soprano. We had

good job and applied successfully the concept when giving out the Target/Aspiration Price as well

as Bargaining Zone for the conversation. The last agreement stopped at 29,000$ - a reasonable

figure for both parties in my opinion.

Chapter III

THIRD AVENUE IN SUNLIGHTI think of him when he first got out of college,

Serious, thin, unlikely to succeed;Anthony Hecht

The third class and our first task was finding a good name for the team. It was really

interesting because we had chance to show off our creativity in some minor things. A lot of funny

names were published such as Four Glasses, Rabbits (Brad Pitt according to Mr. Henry Webb),

Crabs, Athena, etc. However, in my opinion, the name of my team – HWFC which was stand for

Henry Webb Fan Club was the most hilarious name ^^!

Coming back to reality, as usual, we had chance to review the last negotiating exercise –

Sally Soprano v. Lyric Opera. We all thought that it was a good negotiation for both sides because we

finished in six rounds with an agreement of 29,000$. However, when lecturer showed us the

results, there was a creative solution of 50,000% plus 5% of profit – a result which happened

frequently in reality.

However, there were still two cases which could not reach agreement. I was a bit surprised

because last week negotiating exercise was easy

enough to discuss. In both situation, I realized there

was big gap between the interests of those parties.

Some Sally’s agents wanted an unreasonable figure

of 110,000$ or 80,000$ while the opera theatre just

could offer only around 20,000$. Then, these

parties got stuck in carrying out different price and

tried reaching agreement without giving in

unnecessarily optional interests. This was called

“positional bargaining”. The main target of Sally

was appearing on the show – not how much money

she could receive. Luckily, our team defined clearly that objective and did not focus much on

money.

Through the exercise of Sally v. LO, I also recognized the lesson of Negotiate with Integrity.

In most time of negotiation, I often said: “This is our last offer. Accept it or there’ll be no any

agreement among us!” or “We offer the last … we do not accept any thing’s lower!” and more. In the

lecture, I was taught that I needed to be credible and should not say many things that we cannot

follow. The “final offer” was like a lazy negotiation when you wanted to finish everything as soon as

possible.

This week negotiating exercise was A-Far v. Footstep. This was an interesting case because it

contained some cultural issues. Our team played the role of Footstep Group. A non-profit

organization that tried to convert A-Far people to Christian.

Overall, when I read the confidential data of Footstep, I doubted about the statement: “…

There is also occasional military conflict between A-Far and a neighboring region, B-Gon…” ! In normal

life, when there was a conflict between two countries in Middle-East regions, they had to fulfill their

armories. In this case, I thought that A-Far’s main interest should be money in order to help them

protecting territory from B-Gon.

As I thought, the other side begun the negotiation with conditions about money so as to

upgrade their “infrastructures and healthcare services” – from now on, I realized that these guys

really needed money and I doubted they lied us. However, it didn’t give our team much problem.

Everything went really well and much easy for us to negotiate our conditions with them.

At last, we agreed to give them $2,000,000 for buying “necessary things” but they had to

accept these conditions:

- ¾ teachers would be Christian.

- ½ classes would be taught in English.

- We agreed to let both male and female students lived under same roof of dormitory.

- We agreed to let sex education existed within learning programs.

Since I followed the rule of “Focusing on the interest, not position”, our team was successful

in imposing the other party.

Chapter IV

THE FOURTH ELEGYAnd somewhere lions roam, quite unaware,

in their magnificence, of any weakness.Rainer Maria Rilke

4th week of this interesting course and the review about last week A-Far v. Footstep was

quite interesting when at last I knew that my thought about A-Far’s situation was completely right –

they really needed money to supplement armories for heading with B-Gon. Using money as a

catalyst to reach main points in our interests was always a good strategy (in case that we had

enough money to afford). This reminded me about a quote of John D. Rockefeller, “what cannot be

bought by money can be purchased by much more money”!

The negotiation exercise this week was conducted

sooner than usual – it was called Hospital Committee. In

this case, we had to choose 3 in 7 patients who could be

cured after infecting H2N2 – a disease from animal. In

fact, this was the first time I felt very difficult and a

uncomfortable sense fulfilled my mind since I had to

choose who could live and who had to die. After a tough

discussion among our team (because we had different

opinions in deciding who could receive the injection),

we discussed with Athena team. We agreed about the

single mother and the model (this girl had father who

was a powerful man from a party which sponsored for

hospital). Yet we had conflict in choosing the CEO and

the kid. Our team chose CEO because this woman

provided jobs for more than 450 people. However, the

Athena was also right when choosing the kid due to humanity matter – in most case of serious

problems, the kids and females were the highest priorities.

After a long discussion (I had to agree that team Athena was very nice to talk with), we

finally chose the CEO, the child and the model – in real life, a powerful father could bring pressure

to us to rescue his children.

Mr. Henry Webb then showed us some pictures for us to decide “Who lives and Who dies?”.

After some funny pictures such as Kim Jong-Il and Bill Gates, we then fell into some real tough

decisions. A negro kid and an Asian kid, who would you choose? We did not have to tell our decision

but it still left in me some restless feeling.

The final part of this week class was we had to create our own negotiating exercise. This

was really funny because at least we could think and form some fascinating cases.

Chapter V

THE FIFTH WALLSo in death I can rise or I can fall,

But in life’s journey I do not know .Leslie Alexis

Maybe someone will feel strange when I begin writing a new chapter (or new week) for

reflection paper with a couple poetry sentences. With me, writing reflection throughout a learning

process in a course is memorable experience. Hence, I want to make the reflection bolded with my

personality.

The fifth week and I had quiz today. Fortunately, I read the book Getting to Yes yesterday, I

caught up with some main points in necessary chapters so as to work well in the quiz. All of the

questions were quite easy to explain except of the last task “What is NTA mean?”. This was really the

toughest part because some guys certainly would explain with the term “T = Transactional” instead

of “Transnational”!

After that, we had chance to try

negotiating solo face-to-face with my friend

in the case of Dirty Laundry. I took part in

the role of Elegance Cleaners manager who

had destroyed one of my most loyalty client

– Mrs. Taylor. I felt really delight because

this was the first time I could decide

everything by my own and did not care

about my teammates. I thought that I could

impose and took control all of the

negotiation myself (a little bit of Shark type,

huh?!). At the first time, it was really easy

for me because Mrs. Taylor did not have

any evidence to prove that she bought the shirt for large amount of money – 480$. However, I could

not be so rude and enforced her too much. Mrs. Taylor (played by my friend – Tram) was a loyalty

customer; the most essential thing was that we had to negotiate about the compensation for Mrs.

Taylor but also had to keep the reputation for laundry shop.

The discussion was carried out peacefully. Knowing the main interest of Elegance Cleaners

was keeping reputation, I did not take care much on positional bargain and just said the reason that

Mrs. Taylor did not have efficient evidence (in this case was the recipe of clothing shopping) – that

was my strongest advantage for negotiating.

Instead, during the negotiation, we created some funny stuffs such as the Elegance Cleaners

should steal some clothes from other customers to composite for Mrs. Taylor, or Elegance Cleaners

should sew shirts for Mrs. Taylor, etc. We also talked about discount coupons for Mrs. Taylor for

next time coming to Elegance Cleaners. However, we all thought that these ways were so much

complicated.

At last, we decided to halved the money to a certain number – 195$. This was really

interesting when I could negotiate individually with my friend. I recognized the advantages in

working solo was that there were not so many ideas from other people with various personalities;

hence, there would be not much conflicts among those ideas. As a result, everything flowed fluently

with my thought and it was much easy for me to resolve the problems.

Chapter VI

THE SIXTH SENSEAnd we wring hands, but yet once more missWe are condemned to miss and miss it over.

Nikolai GumilevThis week we had chance to learn a bit about Chinese style negotiation. It was an utmost

interesting part because I had heard about the intelligence in negotiating of Chinese people – they

were cleverly adept negotiators and could not be underestimated. They had a lot of skills which

could make you entrust them without any thought.

Our team was requested to read the Renji Hexie – Interpersonal Harmony. In this paragraph,

I really liked the statement of Chinese people: “A man without a smile should not open a shop!”.

During a negotiation, Chinese frequently were not in hurry. They would like to make and create

good relationship among partners before proceeding into main parts of a contract. They could

invite you to hang out, coming to a karaoke bar, nightclub, etc. With them, a steady relationship

before going straightly into the business was more important. But this could be a good point when

you wanted to deal with Chinese. Once you can handling good relationship with them, the Chinese

could consider your interests first if the negotiation became rocky.

Building a good relationship was also an advantage for Chinese. They could have time to

learn more about their partners before deciding anything. That was all to say in this week!

Chapter VII

HENRY THE SEVENTHHenry the Seventh of England

Wasn’t out of the Royal top drawerMarriot Edgar

The seventh week class begun with some important

points for online negotiation. We were introduced with the

advantages as well as some weak points when we have to

negotiate through Internet. Firstly, Mr. Henry Webb showed us

some slides about the questions around this type of negotiation.

We were freely discuss and gave some ideas about what we

thought about an online bargain.

The most essential thing that can make an effective e-

negotiation is that we can have more time to reply and re-consider all of the possible options. This

point is not existed during a face-to-face negotiation – which requires you to think and react quickly

toward issues while we are affected under many external environment. Furthermore, when we

bargain online, we are able to innovate or create more ingenious alternatives to serve best for our

interests.

Basically, one of the communication origins is that we may express our emotions in front of

the other side. This can be a big problem once you cannot control yourself to head to main purposes

of the discussion. Hence, throughout an e-negotiation, you are able to manage of bursting out your

personality and sentiment. You can also diminish the imbalance factors within parties: you do not

have to care about the age difference, the learning base, cultural background, working positions, etc.

For instance, you can wear your favorite clothes (or maybe you can wear nothing if you like) and

reply the email.

Last but not least, one of the most important advantages of online negotiation is that you

can have an archive or record to reconsider again and again.

However, although you practice and own a perfect online negotiation skill, there’re some

problems that you cannot avoid. The City Electricity Supplier is an ultimate force that you cannot be

in opposition to (in Vietnam, the Electricity supplier is EVN Co.)! The other external factors – such

as Internet line or technical problems from mail service providers can cause trouble. In addition,

the waiting-time or delay-time can take 3 or 4 days and during that time, you may be stressful if

you’re discussing with the other party a serious issue. That the most core points we learned in

lectures of Week 7. All of these things are used to prepare for online negotiation in Week 8.

We had negotiation in the end of class. The case of KMD Accounting and this was the first

time our team played as a villain role – the Senior Associate Accountants. We had to try negotiating

with the opponent – Associate Accountants so as to hide KMD Accounting’s corruption on auditing

an account of company so-called CRFT, Inc.

The toughest thing was that we had to talk with a

team that owns two Sharks – team 3. This was the first

time I felt upset and got stuck in a tense situation. I –

with the characteristic of an Owl – tried to find ways

that could make pleasant both sides. In fact, I wanted

them to let our team take responsibility for all of the

auditing matters in the condition that they should keep

secret confidential information. Although I knew that

the interest of Associate Accountants was they needed to

keep their job, but they seemed want to compel us into

their condition. Time ended and there was no

agreement signed between two sides. I also had to beg Mr. Henry for 5 minutes more; however, it

was useless. This was the first negotiation that I became headache and tired after talking.

Through this uncomfortable experience, I realized that in the real life, if we just only tried to

keep our position and force the other party too much, we could have remained nothing! Sometime,

you have to be much flexible in resolving and considering issues.

Chapter VIII

FIT THE EIGHTHThey sought it with thimbles, they sought it with care;

They pursued it with forks and hope;Lewis Carroll

This week we did not have to come to class. Instead, we prepared a good laptop for an

online negotiation in a room at university. The negotiation was carried out on Google Talk and at

9:00 A.M, our lecturer sent us the confidential information.

We were the team of designers in En Fuego and our main objective was applying into the

Chainsawzzz Videogame (CV) – a company located in America. It was sounded like a simple task to

finish; however, there were some humorous problems happened during the negotiation.

First of all, the En Fuegans culture was very strange with all of us. We could not talk about

“luck” or “holidays” words since En Fuegans considered them as worst terms to mention. We could

not give out the business offer or suggest exchanging anything first. Instead, we had to ask the other

side about their family situation, included brothers, parents, and even pets. After that, when asking

about our requested salary, we had to use the odd number and the salary had not to be under

53,000$ (for instance, a salary of 53,009 would be acceptable). We also did not want to start our job

in Monday because it was very bad luck in En Fuego culture.

The negotiation started at 9:30 A.M. The CV company team tried to make the conversation

comfortably in the first time. After some greeting dialogues, the company wanted to talk about the

business. However, we had to ask them all about their family status. We asked about their parents,

wanted to know if they were well. We asked them about their brothers or sisters, wondered if they

were well, too. They said that we were so curious about unrelated issues. But our team wanted to

ask them more and more because it was really funny, our team laughed a lot (I had to accept this

was the most humorous negotiation than ever). After a lot of questions around their parents,

brothers/sisters, then we asked about their pets. We asked them very detailed question such as

“What kind of your pets?” “We’d like feeding dog, too! Were they gloomed?”, etc. After a lot of

nonsense questions, that team seemed losing their patience (!). At last, we finally came straight into

the business matters.

Because this was a very funny talk; thus, both team had delight feeling about the other. As a

result, we reached final agreement very quickly. The CV team agreed to give us the off-days in En

Fuego Independence day, our mom’s birthday and our birthday. Moreover, they also gave us extra

off-days in X-Mas and one week on vacation included a lot of benefit such as insurances, salary

increase each year, etc.

Overall, this was really interesting discussion. The Athena team was very nice and kind, it

was always comfortable and happy when dealing with them. I just wished we could have more and

more negotiations with them in the future.

Chapter X

TENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITYWhy doth my Savior weepAt sight of Sion’s bowers?

John Keble

The tenth week and this is the point where my reflection will end. Someone should be

surprised and wonder why there is not Chapter IX? After experienced in Week 9 and Week 10, I

realized that the Week 10 class was the most memorable class with the multiple negotiation

exercise and a surprise result for that. Hence, I decided to tell you about what happened in Tenth

class, not the Ninth one.

Simply, the task for this week exercise was “maximizing the profit” of three companies

(Apple, Banana and Coconut) when contacting to cooperate with “The Smell of Sau Rieng” in

constructing. There were three team played three different companies. Our team – Coconut – had to

negotiate with Athena team (the nice team which did the online negotiation with us) – Banana and

another team played the role of Apple – the one who had the strongest position.

Because our team was the weakest one; hence, it was much more easy for us to negotiate

with both team since we had nothing to leave - our team could accept any offer in any case.

Understanding our position, we tried to lead them into the contract for all of three teams which

could reach the amount money of $121,000. We accepted to take $15,000 and left $106,000

remaining for Apple and Banana. In our thought, this had to be the solution for “maximizing the

profit” because in this case, three teams could have the highest figure! The last numbers were our

team: $13,000, Banana got $38,000 and Apple got $70,000!

However, when we submitted the result to Mr. Henry, he did not accept these numbers. He

said that all of us did not “maximize the profit”. All of us were very confused!

The guy who could create such an exercise had very smart mind! Every team was very

balance. In any case, we could not know what would be the best answers! When we talked this

problem to Mr. Henry, he said that “No Answer” was the right answer and although we had time to

discuss this case, we would never have the right actual numbers.

CONCLUSIONIn conclusion, I have never had any practical and interesting classes in RMIT like

Negotiating Transnational Agreements of Mr. Henry Webb. And now, I am totally confident about

“How to negotiate correctly?” and in the future, maybe I can never put myself into some nonsense

situation. Scientific negotiating as well as sensitive feeling plus multi-side thinking are the most epic

things that I learned from this course.

And after all, why don’t we come to Ben Thanh market now? Some shopkeepers must be

surprised!