The negotiation and dispute resolution field pictures itself as having so much to contribute to improving human interactions – relationships, transactions and engaging with conflict.

However – let’s face it:

99% of the population of the planet (a gross under-estimation!) have never taken, and will never take, a negotiation course. They will never buy a negotiation book (and even I buy negotiation books which sit on the shelf unread). They will never read my blog or my Facebook…

Imagine a world in which important, top-level policy decisions, such as those regarding nuclear power, higher education or foreign relations were made on the basis of real discussion focused on real facts. In these conversations, hype would be washed away, moderate majorities would probably find more voice, and (hopefully) better decisions would be made – with less residual acrimony and polarization.

John Lennon’s “Imagine” material? I don’t think so.…

After exploring objective measures for student assessment currently employed in negotiation courses, co-author Yael Efron and I set out to determine and explore the most subjective measures teachers apply. After having discovered that the most objective measure of all – old-school quizzes – was rarely employed, we were not at all surprised to conclude that the most subjective measure employed is also (by far!) the most popular one, an assessment tool encountered in nearly all negotiation…