Una Mesa, Dos Estilos

The regional business-development director of a fictional Costa Rican cold-chain company negotiates a three-way joint venture with a Mexican family group from Monterrey and an Argentine port operator from Rosario.

Both partners are Latin American, and they do not negotiate alike: the Mexican founder wants the relationship before the numbers and rarely says no in public, his daughter the CFO negotiates numbers first, and the Argentine chief executive enjoys open argument and answers to his board.

Stage 1: how she prepares (one regional playbook, country tendencies as hypotheses and then reading each person, or a cheat sheet of national traits applied as rules), the first meetings and the first offer. Stage 2: the pace for each partner, with whom she negotiates in the family group and what she does with information.

Stage 3: an indirect no in Monterrey, a public rejection in Buenos Aires and whether a trusted third party comes in. Stage 4: the structure of the concessions, the document that is signed and a delayed port permit.

The model is deterministic: each option has fixed effects on the value of the deal, the relationship with each partner and the weeks to sign; the way she reads the counterparts multiplies later relationship gains, some pairs of options change each other, and trust in the colder partner adds or removes deal value.

The score combines the quality of each decision with the deal value, the relationship with the colder partner and the weeks to sign, and is capped when a decision breaks the law (a forged letter of intent, a payment to an official). Inspired by published comparative research on negotiation in Latin America and on cross-cultural negotiation. Spanish (primary, Latin American register) and English.

An advanced simulation for participants used to working with the main frameworks and trade-offs of the subject, designed for executive education and experienced professionals.