Negotiator bandwidth

Negotiation theory is most useful to scholars and practitioners when it is applied across negotiation domains. However, negotiators often fail to do this and, instead, segment their negotiations by industry, life circumstance, or geographic location. In this chapter we introduce the concept of negotiation bandwidth, which is the ability of negotiators to use strategies across a wide range of negotiation situations. We argue that the ability to apply negotiation theory broadly across domains is critical to performance and learning. We identify three failures of negotiation bandwidth: domain myopia, the self-preoccupation effect, and the script hijack effect. We highlight the consequences of segmenting negotiations into situation-specific domains and discuss strategies for overcoming these failures of bandwidth.