Victor Baguilat Jr.

NEGOTIATING VALUES

I have been trying to understand what Professor Nieves means when she said that values are
non-negotiable. I had to talk to my classmates what they think about this because I disagree that
values are not negotiable. I have always believed that in every interaction that we have with
other people with a unique set of beliefs and values there is a constant negotiation of values.
For example, I am a progressive libertarian who sometimes venture too far to the left on certain
issues such social justice, marriage equality and legalization of drugs, but my interaction with a
classmate from the Philippine National Police made me reconsider my stand on legalization of
some types of drugs. There are issues that I consider as enduring convictions, such as my stand
on marriage equality and death penalty, but there are issues where I tend to fluctuate on such
as legalization of prostitution and abortion. I am willing to negotiate my stance on those issues.

I felt uneasy because I was thinking that there might be something wrong with my values system
because it seems that I am willing to compromise on some of my values. I told myself to just
sleep off my uneasiness. Alas, when I woke up, I think I had a fresh take on things. When I
looked back at the definition of negotiation, what Prof. Nieves said is that negotiation is “a
process of potentially opportunistic interaction aimed at advancing the fullest of One’s interest
by jointly decided action”, I realized that there is an action required. So, I agree that what is
negotiated is actually the course of action or the material outcome. It is the behavior that is the
subject of the negotiation not necessarily the values. This is the AHA moment. Values take time
to crystallize and it often operates in the realm of the subconscious, so one cannot really change
values through a formal negotiating setting. This for me is the reason I should not negotiate
values in order to attain a jointly decided action.

This reminds me of what Otto Scharmer said that “if you want to change a stakeholder
relationship from, say, dysfunctional to helpful, you cannot just order people to do it. You have
to intervene further upstream…” In the same breath, we cannot just negotiate a dysfunctional
relationship and the underlying values therein, but it is possible to negotiate their dysfunctional
behavior.