Football Stadium Expansion: A Multiparty Negotiation Exercise

Abstract

Multiparty negotiations are a unique context in which three or more parties have different issues, priorities, and underlying interests. The Football Stadium Expansion is a four-person negotiation exercise that reinforces distributive and integrative negotiation skills (e.g., recognizing priorities, making concessions) as well as introduces three negotiation skills necessary for a multiparty context: coalition forming, decision agreement rules, and straw votes. Using a setting familiar to both students and community members—an expansion of a campus football stadium—this exercise is ideal for classes or trainings with a 50- or 75-minute limit.