The Bargaining Manager: Enhancing Organizational Results Through Effective Negotiation

Ramundo demonstrates that bargaining is the logical substitute for bossing and the reality of the expanded negotiating role of the manager. He establishes that negotiation is a technical managerial skill which can fill the void created by the absence of meaningful management process. To resolve the dilemma that bargaining is inherently neutral and can be abused, he shows how advocacy and other pursuit of personal interest can be controlled by the organization. He concludes by proposing that his effective-negotiation system, shown to be easily assimilated and most compatible with the management process, be institutionalized as an integral part of that process. Ramundo’s approach is refreshingly basic in identifying commitment to the organization and effective managerial process as the keys to more effective management.

Every organization is faced with the need to improve competitiveness if it is to prosper in its task environment. Management must respond to this challenge by a return to the basics of committed service to the organization and improved operational performance: the core elements of effective management.

Management by bargain is a broad concept. It means that consensus development through bargaining is now involved in all of the functions and roles of the manager. Bargaining is the process of the workplace. Bargaining outside the organization has also expanded because improved competitiveness demands cooperative activities with other organizations. The result for the organization is that negotiation is truly everywhere. To serve his organization well, the manager needs formal training in negotiating skills and the opportunity to gain experience as a bargaining manager. The organization should mandate training in the effective-negotiation system and use of the system as the operational adjunct to management process. Manager-negotiators, empowered and motivated by the effective-negotiation system, can serve the organization better.

BERNARD A. RAMUNDO, is a practioner-specialist on negotiations and negotiation techniques, who offers a full range of negotiation services, including training, consultation, and representation. During his more than 42 years of military and civil federal service, Dr. Ramundo represented the United States in international negotiations and occupied a variety of senior-level managerial positions in the Departments of Defense and Transportation. From 1969-1985 he had program responsibility for, and managed, all U.S. transportation technical-cooperation activities with foreign counterparts. From 1963-1990, he was a professorial lecturer at the National Law Center, George Washington University, where he pioneered and taught courses on negotiation concepts and techniques and the Soviet legal system.