Negotiation Simulation: Trade Balance
This activity simulates international trade environment with countries buying and selling from each other. Success is determined by how well countries conduct trades—the most profitable trade agreements they get into with each other. There will also be auctions or outside buyers/sellers that will create situations that encourages cooperation among the countries.
There are 3 types of countries:
1. Oil Producing
2. Food Producing
3. Manufacturing
To make it easy to track the groups, each group should have a name. The names are decided based on the type of country.
1. Oil Producing (name ends “ia” e.g. Tunisia, Arabia, Monrovia)
2. Food Producing (Name ends with “stan” e.g. Kazakhstan, Dagarstan, Bobostan)
3. Manufacturing (names ends with “land” e.g. Thailand, Swaziland, KimJungLand)
Description
1. At the start, each team is given a combination of Money and one Product (either Oil, Food or Machines). These can be sold to other countries or traded for other products.
a. Students are randomly put into teams (to assess conflict resolution abilities)
b. Each team chooses a country name
c. Each team is handed an envelope containing money and products (1500 dollars + 1500 tons of product)
2. Teams should trade with other countries during a given trading cycles (25 minutes per cycle). In a 75 minutes class, there are two cycles with a break in between for groups to enter their trades and plan future trades.
3. Trades can only happen in class.
4. Each trade will have a transaction number, to make it easier to track the trades. Write a list of randomly generated numbers on the board, and students should come and claim them for each trade. Both buyer and seller should use the same transaction number.
5. After each trading cycle, students will also get a fresh injection of products.
6. Between trading cycles, students can exchange products.
7. Each trade needs to be submitted – using an online form (google form)
8. Combination of any two products can be exchanged for another product (Oil + Food = ½ Machines)
9. Occasionally, there will be auctions. Auctions will be for combination of items. Some auctions will announce the combination of items; other auctions will be secret and just say what the total tonnage on auction is. When there are auctions or outside buyers/sellers, break times will be longer and trading cycle shorter (to make it fit in the class time).
10. Countries will also get more products in between trading cycles.
There might also be outside sellers and buyers, which will have special requirements (for example, they might want a different combination of products, or require a different combination but from one country, or require one contract but presented by 3 countries)
Data entered for each trade (all fields are mandatory except comments. Must fill either Items Bought OR Items sold)
Ø Transaction ID
Ø Selling Country
Ø Buying Country
Ø Item(s) Sold
Ø Item(s) Received
Ø Balance Money
Ø Balance Oil
Ø Balance Machines
Ø Balance Food
Ø Comments
Objective
l Increase the amount of money and products by trading with other countries
Individual Report (5 points)
To be submitted on the 5th of December
You must mention each negotiation cycle you participated in, how it went and what you learned from it.
Example of things you can talk about:
Ø How did this activity impact you?
Ø What did you learn? What was the most useful and least useful lessons?
² The learning can be:
ü Positive (“I learned how to use this strategy…”),
ü Negative (“I learned this strategy failed…”)
ü Reflective (“I learned how to use this strategy…”)
ü Observations (“I learned this about other people… about this situation…) or more
Ø What aspect of negotiation do you think you need to improve on?