Another definition of strategy, particularly useful for its applications to negotiation, comes from game theory.

In game theoretic terms, a strategy is a complete plan: a plan which specifies what choices [a game player] will make in every possible situation (von Neumann and Morgenstern, 1944, p. 79). This definition presupposes that all players have complete and perfect information (i.e., that everyone knows everything). Recognizing that these conditions occur rarely (if ever) in human affairs, a more pragmatic theory of games departs from the classical model to identify four elements typical to real-world strategy formulation: choice, chance, interdependence, and imperfect information (McDonald, 1963). These elements constitute a realistic description of the strategic task: Most definitions of negotiations characterize it as voluntary a matter of choice (see Chapter 1). Negotiation outcomes are rarely completely predictable; rather, they are subject to some elements of chance in the play of the game, as needs, interests, powers, and skills of the parties interplay with each other. Many different motives usually affect the decision to play the game, motives that recognize, clarify, and sometimes reinforces the interdependence of the parties (see Chapter 1). Although each side in a negotiation may know its own interests, needs, strengths, and weaknesses, knowledge of these areas for the other side is usually imperfect and incomplete, and may or may not improve as the negotiation unfolds. Strategy, Tactics, or Planning? How are strategy and tactics related? Although the line between strategy and tactics may seem indistinct, one major difference is that of scale, perspective, or immediacy (Quinn, 1991). Tactics are short-terms, adaptive moves designed to enact or pursue broad (or higher-level) strategies, which in turn provide stability, continuity, and direction for tactical behaviors. For example, your negotiation strategy might be integrative, designed to build and maintain a productive relationship with the other party while using a joint problem-solving approach to the issues. In pursuing this strategy, appropriate tactics include maintaining reliable, predictable preferences (to foster communication). Tactics, then, are subordinate to strategy; they are structured, directed, and driven by strategic considerations. How are strategy and planning related? Planning is an integral part of the strategy process the action component. The planning process takes in all the considerations and choices that parties in a negotiation make about tactics, resource use, and contingent responses in pursuit of the overall strategy how they plan to proceed, to use what they have to get what they want, subject to their strategic guidelines. We address planning in detail later in this chapter. Strategic Options Vehicles for Achieving Goals In the strictest sense, a unilateral choice of strategy would be wholly one-sided and intentionally ignorant of any information about the other negotiator. In our use of the term, however, a unilateral choice is one that is made without the active involvement of the other party. A reasonable effort to gain information about the other party and to incorprotate that information gathering process in more detail.

In Chapter 1, we used a framework called the dual concerns model (Pruitt and Rubin, 1986) to describe the basic orientation that people take toward conflict. This model proposes that individuals in conflict have two levels of related concerns: a level of concern for their own outcomes, and Sorenson (1989) propose a similar model for the choice of a negotiation strategy. According to this model, a negotiators unilateral choice of strategy is reflected in the answers to two simple questions: (1) How much concern does the actor have for achieving the substantive outcomes at stake in this negotiation (sunstantive goals)? And (2) how much concern does the negotiator have for the current