Co-resolution in Action: Fair Play in Negotiation

One of the problems with negotiation is that it is an unregulated exchange of information and proposals.  While informality and flexibility are advantageous, the trade-off is a lack of common rules or ethics and the oversight mechanisms that would be necessary to enforce them.  So, for example, if both parties agree to come up with a proposal for settlement, the exchange could play out as follows:
(1) Party A voices their proposal first,
(2) Party B prefers the proposal Party A just communicated to their own proposal (which would have benefited Party A even more),
(3) Party B decides to abandon the more-generous proposal and communicates one that is commensurate with Party A's offer.

It is problems like this that cause negotiating parties to be cautious or overreaching with the positions they communicate.  However, in co-resolution, this exchange has played out as follows:
(1) The co-resolvers (Susan and I) caucus with our respective parties and help them come up with ideas for resolution,
(2) We reconvene the four-way negotiation and raise the issue of ideas for resolution,
(3) My party communicates his proposal first (and I help to communicate/sell it to the other party),
(4) Susan's party then expresses that she doesn't want to communicate her proposal,
(5) I remind Susan that we should be negotiating fairly (Susan knows what her party had prepared as a proposal in caucus), and Susan gently reminds her party that this process involves negotiation behavior that both co-resolvers regard as fair,
(6) Susan's party communicates her proposal, and the parties negotiate within the overlap of their respective offers.

As this has played out, Party B (Susan's party in the example) has only needed a gentle prodding.  Most parties fully accept the mutuality of co-resolution, appreciate and abide by the directions given by their own co-resolver, and only require a reminder when they find that manipulation (defection in the Negotiator's Dilemma) would better serve their individual interests in any one part of the broader negotiation.

Thus, the co-resolvers use their ongoing working relationship as an ethical yardstick to monitor the parties and make sure that they are negotiating honestly, reciprocating exchanges in information, and abiding by actions that they promise to take within the informal exchange.  If either co-resolver felt that their own party was attempting to deceive or manipulate the other, the co-resolver could threaten to terminate the process.  Parties should know from the outset that co-resolution is a process in which common ethics will be applied and--following Lowenstein's theories on the psychological urge toward filling gaps in knowledge--I would suspect that most parties would prefer common ethical regulations (thereby allowing them to know that the other side was communicating fairly).  Because standard negotiation does not enjoy oversight or set definitions of "fair play," this is a benefit unique to co-resolution.