Zagreb School of Economics & Management International Summer Negotiations Program Enrollments Open

The Zagreb School of Economics and Management (ZSEM), which is the first AACSB accredited business school in Croatia, are now taking applications for its Summer Negotiations program…

The Summer Negotiations is a unique program which offers students to learn from a top US professor, Professor George Siedel, PhD, who is returning back to ZSEM this summer to teach a course called: Negotiation and Dispute resolution. Not only do students listen in class, but they also have the opportunity to practice negotiating with students from all over the world every day. There are many company visits to companies such as P&G Croatia, the US Embassy in Croatia, Croatia’s largest food processing company Podravka, and Croatia’s coffee brand Franck.

“Because we all negotiate every day, the content is useful to everyone, regardless of their position in a company and type of company. The course is even useful in personal negotiations. A business executive in one of my seminars put it this way: “Life is negotiation.” As a business leader and a mother with young children, she recognized the importance of negotiation in both our business and personal lives, ” Professor Siedel explains, adding that students will get equipped with a whole set of negotiating tools.

“Students learn how important it is to ask questions so that they can identify the interests of the other side. By understanding interests, they can develop solutions that benefits both sides. I also emphasize the importance of planning. One of my students recently wrote me that he used a planning tool from my course when he met with one of his suppliers. In his words, “We had a great meeting, expanded the pie, learned tons about what each other wanted. Win-win. The projected savings over the next 5 years is over $4 million.”

Other topics in the course include, pychological tools that are useful in negotiations, how to assess your negotiation style, how to develop your negotiating power and how to handle ethical issues in negotiations. To help students with their planning Professor Siedel developed a set of tools that are available for free (along with links to a free app) at this website: negotiationplanner.com.

Professor Siedel says the students who participated in the school last year took a great deal away from it.

“The students were from the United States, Croatia and several other countries including Russia, France, Japan and Mexico. They did a great job in negotiating against each other in every class. These negotiations provided them with cross-cultural skills that will be useful in the future. After the course, the US students told us that their favorite part of the trip was meeting and interacting with the Croatian students.and learning about the Croatian culture,” he concluded.

This year the 9-day summer program, which will be held from August 20 – 29 2016.

Tuition Fees are: €645 – (including weekend trip to the coastal city of Zadar w/overnight stay, visit to Plitvice Lakes National Park, company visits, lunch meals every day). Applications end 20 June 2016. Apply online: http://summerschool.zsem.hr/

Professor Siedel, who was a Visiting Professor at Stanford University and Harvard University, a Visiting Scholar at Berkeley, and a Parsons Fellow at the University of Sydney, teaches undergraduate and graduate courses at the University of Michigan and seminars to business leaders around the world. His Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on “Successful Negotiation” has attracted hundreds of thousands of learners worldwide and is one of the most popular courses in history. Professor Siedel has received many teaching awards, including the 2014 Executive Program Professor of the Year Award from a consortium of thirty-six leading universities committed to international education.