Duration
About 3 hours
You set every stage timing from the professor panel, so it fits one block or splits across two sessions.
Boardroom Negotiation Simulation
Negotiation simulation where students trade four issues
The Finsimco Boardroom Negotiation Simulation puts each student on the sell side of a divisional sale with four issues and one counterparty. The board votes once, on whatever comes back.
- About 3 hours, single-player
- ZOPA, BATNA and integrative trades
- In-class, online or hybrid delivery
At a glance
Format
Single-player simulation
Each student holds the preparation, bargaining and board roles in turn and submits one agreed package.
Level
Undergraduate to MBA
Adjustable: two issues against a known counterparty, up to four issues, a hidden floor and a second bidder.
Professor tools
Timeline and session controls
Manage students, adjust stage timings, control progression and monitor individual inputs.
Prerequisites
None
No prior knowledge. Reservation prices, the bargaining zone, alternatives and multi-issue trades are taught inside.
Delivery
In class, online or hybrid
The web-based simulation supports in-person, remote, blended and homework-supported delivery.
Assessment
Optional, per student
Every submission is individual, so the preparation, the offers made and the review answers export per student.
Course fit
Fits negotiation and management modules
Designed for Negotiation, Strategic Management, Corporate Finance and Organisational Behaviour courses.
Concepts covered
The topics a boardroom negotiation module has to cover: reservation prices and the best alternative, the bargaining zone, distributive against integrative bargaining, trading across issues of different value, reading a concession pattern and carrying a package through a board.
The apparatus every negotiation course opens with, and the figure it rarely reaches. The price line shows a seller who walks below eighty-two and a buyer who walks above a hundred and four, a bargaining zone twenty-two million dollars wide, with opening positions outside it on both sides telling nobody anything. The lower chart plots value to the buyer against value to the seller. Splitting the difference on price lands well inside the frontier. A package trading the earnout against the warranty cap and the timetable sits on it and is better for both.
Learning outcomes
Written to drop into your module descriptor without rewriting. On completing the simulation, your students will be able to:
- Establish a reservation price anchored to a stated alternative.
- Identify a bargaining zone and explain why opening positions reveal little about it.
- Distinguish distributive from integrative bargaining and explain when each applies.
- Trade across issues of different value to each party to reach a better joint outcome.
- Read a concession pattern and explain what it signals about the other side's floor.
- Carry a negotiated package through a decision body that values it differently.
What students do
Each student runs the negotiation alone, holding the preparation, bargaining and board roles in turn. All three want something different from the same mandate, and only one package is agreed.
The gameflow every student sees before they start. The three roles come into play during the preparation and the room; briefing, the assessment and the debrief are worked as a single view. Materials arrive stage by stage: mandate and role cards at briefing, then the valuation range, alternative buyer and issue weights for the preparation, then the offers, counterparty signals and package builder once negotiation opens.
Preparation
Students establish a walk-away anchored to a named alternative rather than a preference, which is the only thing that makes a floor hold under pressure.
Bargaining
Students make and read offers across four issues, where the pattern of concessions says more about the floor than any statement about it.
Board
Students carry a package back to a board that values the issues differently from the negotiator and votes once on the whole thing.
How it works
Five stages. Students prepare a floor, negotiate four issues and carry a package to the board.
- 1
Stage 1 · 15 min
Briefing Docs · Mandate · Role Cards
1Briefing
Students watch the intro video, review a divisional sale with a board mandate, a valuation range and one alternative buyer who has not yet confirmed, and take on all three roles, checking the four issues and the success criteria before any contact is made.
- 2
Stage 2 · 45 min
Valuation Range · Alternative Buyer · Issue Weights · Tool Tips
2Prepare
The preparation decides most of it. Working as preparation, the student tests whether the alternative buyer is real and sets a floor against it; as bargaining, chooses an opening and plans a concession pattern; as board, establishes which of the four issues the board will not move on at any price.
- 3
Stage 3 · 60 min
Offers · Counterparty Signals · Package Builder · Live Scores
3The Room
The negotiation runs across four issues. Price is the only one both sides want the same way, so it can only be divided. The earnout, the warranty cap and the timetable are worth different amounts to each side, which is where the joint gains are, and the counterparty mentions a second bidder nobody can verify.
- 4
Stage 4 · 35 min
Review Questions · Package Summary · Outcome Report · Review Pack
4The Assessment
The package is assessed. Students are asked what their walk-away was anchored to, which issue they gave away first and what it was worth to the other side, how much joint value a straight price split would have destroyed, and whether the second bidder ever existed.
- 5
Stage 5 · No limit
Winners · Completion Summary
5Debriefing
Students review their own package, compare trades across the cohort, revisit the moves that separated them and reflect on the feedback. Winners and the completion summary give you a structure for the discussion.
What the experience looks like
The student interface carries the issues, the offers and the package. The professor panel carries the timeline, the controls and every individual agreement.
Prepare
Students work issue by issue, with their own value, the estimated value to the other side and the board's red line side by side, and a written reason required for the walk-away.
Room
The frontier column is the one that matters. The current package is six points inside it, and the issue that would close the gap is the one neither side has mentioned.
Professor Controls
Your view. Adjust any stage timing, start or stop the session, and compare the price each student agreed with how much joint value their package captured.
See how this simulation fits your module
Explore the student and professor experience, and discuss timing, setup and syllabus fit.
Where it fits your syllabus
It works best as the session that moves a class past price.
Teach before it
Nothing specific. Reservation prices, the bargaining zone, alternatives and multi-issue trading are explained inside the activity.
Where it sits
Early to mid module, typically weeks three to seven, once the basic vocabulary has been introduced.
What it sets up
Multi-party negotiation, mediation, cross-border deals, contract design, and any assessment asking students to plan and defend a negotiation.
The boardroom negotiation course guide sets out where it sits in a full module.
What students get wrong
The three mistakes students make on this case, and what each one gives you in the debrief. Our simulations are designed around them: read the learning science behind it.
1
They set a floor with nothing behind it
A walk-away is only a floor if there is a named alternative at that level. Students who set one because it feels right discover in the second hour that the other side has worked out there is nothing underneath it.
2
They negotiate price first
Settling the one issue both sides want the same way removes the currency needed to trade the other three. Students who open on price and only then raise the earnout find they are asking for a concession rather than offering an exchange.
3
They concede in a readable pattern
Eight, then four, then two announces the floor more clearly than any statement could. Students watch the other side's numbers closely and almost never watch the shape of their own.
How to debrief it
The debrief runs itself. Every student sees their results, the cohort comparison and the decisions that produced them, with nothing for you to prepare. If you would rather lead the discussion, these questions work straight from a slide, and they use what your cohort actually did.
- What was your walk-away anchored to, and would it have held?
- Which issue did you give away first, and what was it worth to them?
- How much joint value would a straight price split have destroyed?
- Who in the room traded most, and did they get the better price?
- Did the second bidder ever exist?
Assess the preparation and the trades, not the price
Assessment is optional. Run the simulation ungraded as an applied activity, or use platform data as supporting evidence. Every student generates a preparation note, offers, a concession pattern, an agreed package and written rationales. Because the simulation is single-player, every input belongs to one named student, so there is no group-work marking to untangle. All of it exports as CSV or PDF, per student, so you can assess reasoning rather than a result.
What professors can assess
- Whether the walk-away is anchored to a stated alternative rather than a preference
- Whether the package trades issues of different value rather than dividing price
How to interpret the score
- The highest price is not the best package; read what was given to reach it
- Use the leaderboard for cohort comparison, not for grading
On generative AI: written rationales are exactly what marking teams now worry about. Because every rationale here is tied to a preparation note the student recorded inside the platform before negotiation opened, the reasoning can be checked against the evidence rather than taken on trust.
Low risk to try with a class
Students rate it
93% of students rate Finsimco simulations Excellent, across more than 30,000 responses.
You are not on your own
Teaching notes, a setup and facilitation guide and a gameflow diagram come with it, and we support your first delivery directly.
No grading commitment
Run it ungraded the first time. Assessment is optional and can be added once you have seen how your cohort responds.
A bad session is recoverable
Pause or stop at any point and resume later without losing submitted data, so an overrun costs you a timetable slot, not the activity.
Read what lecturers say.
What AACSB and AMBA say about simulations
Ron Tuninga, Managing Director for EMEA at AACSB, and Victor Hedenberg, Membership Director at AMBA, on why simulation-based learning belongs in business education. Watch both interviews.
FAQs
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Get the course fit sheet
A one-page summary of this simulation, covering stages and timings, roles, concepts, learning outcomes and the debrief questions, plus a full sample teaching pack from one of our live simulations, so you can see exactly what you would be running.
Book a Demo
During the call, we can:
- Show the student and professor experience
- Discuss format, timing and syllabus fit
- Walk through setup, live delivery and optional assessment evidence
- Answer questions from your module team