Question: Paper Instructions
A paper on a negotiations-related topic. The purpose of the paper is to explore a topic of interest in more depth than covered in class and to increase your understanding of negotiation or conflict management.
• Analyze a real negotiation from current or historical events. For example, you might analyze aspects of peace negotiations in the Middle East, negotiations between teams and players in major league baseball, a historical negotiation, etc. The particular negotiation you select should include enough detail and richness to allow you to develop several new insights in your paper.
Formatting and References: The paper should be 5-7 pages, double-spaced (12 point font and 1inch margins) with no minimum length (note that references and tables are not included in the 7 page limit). Submit a paper in essay format (outlines and bullet points are not conducive to analyzing in depth and are thus inappropriate for this assignment). In building your analysis and arguments, you can include any number of referenced sources in your paper, but at least two of those references must be academic sources (not including the assigned books and readings for our course). The reason for this requirement is that it is important to learn to analyze situations by drawing on the best available evidence, and that requires knowing how to locate and evaluate the quality of recommendations and publications that are available to you. Academic sources have content that has been empirically tested over time using various scientific methods and evidence (surveys, experiments, case studies), whereas non-academic sources are based more on people's untested opinions and impressions. The last page of this handout has detailed information on the difference between academic versus non-academic sources, as well as how to find academic sources. When referencing online sources, you may pick any one referencing format you prefer (footnotes, endnotes, or author/title in text with a bibliography) as long as you use it consistently.
Evaluation criteria:
• Analysis: How well do you understand the course concepts you employ? To what extent are you able to bring meaningful insights to understanding the topic you have chosen? How creative and challenging is your choice of topic and your analysis? Do you offer original insights, analysis, or arguments by going beyond describing what happened to also include why it unfolded that way?
• Relevance: Some course concepts are more relevant for understanding a particular negotiation topic or situation than others. How relevant are the course concepts you reference to gain insight into the negotiation topic you chose? How accurately and effectively do you relate your analysis to the concepts discussed in the course?
• Exposition: How clearly written and professionally presented is the paper? What is the quality of referenced sources? Have the formatting guidelines been adhered to?