Deepak Malhotra and Max H. Bazerman are professors at Harvard Business School, where both teach negotiation to MBA students and executives. Their approach in this book grew out of three sources that reinforce each other. Academic research into how people actually behave under bargaining conditions, their own work advising companies and governments through real negotiations, and years of watching what students get right and wrong in the classroom.
Malhotra focuses on negotiation strategy, deal making, and the resolution of conflicts that appear intractable. His work extends well beyond business into disputes where the parties have stopped talking altogether. He has written on how agreements get reached in situations that look hopeless, and that background shapes the book's insistence that a deadlocked negotiation usually means the terms are wrong rather than the deal is impossible.
Bazerman comes at it from behavioral decision research. His work centers on judgment, ethics, and the specific ways intelligent people make predictable errors. He has published extensively on why we fail to notice information sitting in plain view and how bias shapes choices we believe are rational. That research is the backbone of the sections here on cognitive traps and on why the negotiator who understands their own thinking has an edge over one who simply talks well.
Together they wrote a book that treats negotiation as a learnable system rather than a gift. The techniques come with evidence attached, and the advice assumes you will be negotiating with the same people again, which is why the relationship gets as much attention as the deal.
