This issue of Negotiation Journal is dedicated to the theme of critical moments (CMs) in negotiation and related conflict management and resolution processes. It sprang from a Program on Negotiation workshop of the same name held on September 27–28, 2019 at Harvard Law School. It is the second conference and special issue on this topic. The first workshop was held in November 2003 and led to a special issue of the Journal that appeared in April 2004. Our goal for the most recent workshop and this special issue was to revisit the concept of CMs reviewing developments in research and practice that have occurred during the ensuing sixteen years.

Kimberlyn Leary’s introduction to the 2004 special issue on CMs summarized a number of key ideas discussed by the authors in that issue. She tackled the fundamental problem of how to capture the meaning of CMs, noting that they are critical because they “carry urgency and are associated with a subjective sense that ordinary controls or rules no longer seem to be in play” (2004: 143). They are moments in time because they have a fleeting quality and, therefore, are easy to miss. She noted that CMs have consequences that result from the way negotiators react to them. These working definitions set the stage for a wide‐ranging exploration of CMs as they occur in many contexts and at several levels of analysis. The earlier authors discussed how CMs narrow a negotiator’s focus, how they often occur under the conditions of uncertainty, their elements of anxiety and surprise, their transformative potential, the importance of synchronicity in CMs, and their actionable feature. Many of these ideas reappear in the second rendition of the project. In addition, a number of new ideas surface in the articles to follow. These ideas come from some who participated in the first workshop and special issue as well as new participants in the project.

The concept of CMs resonates in both the research and practice communities. For researchers, the value of CMs resides in analyzing the conditions under which they occur and their consequences for the future course of a negotiation. The primary goal of researchers is to explain and analyze CMs in the service of theory development. For practitioners, the value of the concept lay primarily in its contribution to clinical or other applied practices such as mediation. The identification or creation of these vivid moments is often regarded as an opportunity for revealing insights or resolving impasses. For both researchers and practitioners, CMs provide windows of understanding that broaden our appreciation for how negotiation processes unfold and culminate in satisfying agreements.

The current set of articles extends our understanding of CMs in several directions. One direction is toward appreciating the plasticity of the concept. Just as a negotiator or analyst thinks he or she grasps the moment, it disappears in a flurry of conversations or events. This ever‐changing feature is a problem in the analyst’s quest for achieving construct validity essential for theory development. As David Laws illuminates, it is also a problem for the clinician’s attempts at diagnosis. One piece of advice for catching this fleeting moment is to be vigilant. Monitoring the moves and turns that unfold increases the chances that emergent opportunities will not be missed. The other possible glitch in this process is the way the vigilant negotiator adjusts to the change. Daniel Druckman shows that responses to these moments can have escalatory or de‐escalatory consequences depending on whether tough or soft moves are matched. Either consequence can be realized by the way conversations are structured, often by third parties. As Chet Harding shows, even simple words can turn difficult interactions around. But it is also the case, as Carrie Menkel‐Meadow argues, that “just saying no” may be the preferred response when further negotiation is likely to be harmful.

Moving outward, another direction is toward appreciating a larger context within which negotiating interactions occur. A variety of organizational actors have a stake in negotiation outcomes. Understanding how these networks work helps to navigate them. These can take the form of nurturing relationships by connecting with key actors, interlocutors, or stakeholders. Easier said than done of course, but Deborah Kolb provides compelling examples of how it can work. Joel Cutcher‐Gershenfeld also considers CMs within the larger context, analyzing how CMs become pivotal events, that, in turn, can result in larger organizational transformations. Expanding our analyses of CMs in these directions also moves us into the realms of organization behavior and systems analysis. They change our purview from the unresolvable quality of infinite games to more resolvable finite games, following William Donohue’s distinction.

Another direction suggested by these articles is the skills needed to shift the frame of a negotiation from confrontation to collaboration. This shift, regarded as a CM, is particularly challenging for mediators dealing with intractable conflicts. It is also challenging in social settings where a person is making unwanted overtures or perpetrating violence. The articles by Susskind, Sharpe, and Forester, respectively, describe these skills and make a strong case that they can be learned. One of these learned skills is perspective taking where, as Harborne Stewart shows, calibrating both one’s own and the counterpart’s options in a CM can be highly impactful.

One theme running throughout the articles is the elusive and expansive nature of CMs. They are elusive in the sense of being difficult to pin down in analysis or practice. Missed moments are almost impossible to recapture. Indeed, we only know what was missed in retrospect. But these may also be learning moments in a manner similar to the way we perform counter‐factual analyses. Although troubling, knowing what could have been can be used as a teaching lesson valuable for future encounters. Better yet is anticipating the prospects of CMs during the process of negotiating. Here is where the practice skills discussed by some of the issue’s contributors come in handy along with the research findings from laboratory experiments. Experiments may be regarded as tools for discovering the conditions or precipitants that lead to CMs.

With regard to expansiveness, the articles cover a variety of settings and are written by authors from a number of social science fields. The settings include several types of international negotiation, a large unionized organization (Ford Motor Company and the United Automobile Workers Union), US–China trade talks, community development clinics, and improvisation workshops. The disciplines include social psychology, political science and international relations, communication, labor relations, game theory, education, political philosophy, and law. The authors include both practitioners and theorists; most contributions combine theory with practice. This variety suggests that CMs are to be found here, there, and most everywhere. Surely, they are fundamental to a broad construal of social interaction processes. The study of negotiation, as a type of social interaction, produces insights that have implications for understanding the flows and rhythms of other processes. CMs are the punctuations that mark transitions in conversations and social relationships. They are also the “aha” experiences that provide meaning to both casual and long‐term encounters. With this in mind, we invite our readers from many walks of life to join us in the endeavor to learn more about CMs.

本期《谈判杂志》的主题是谈判中的关键时刻（CM）以及相关的冲突管理和解决过程。它源自2019年9月27日至28日在哈佛法学院举行的同名谈判计划研讨会。这是该主题的第二次会议和特刊。第一次研讨会于2003年11月举行，导致了《期刊》的一期特刊于2004年4月出版。我们最近一次研讨会的目的和本期特刊是重新审视CM的概念，以回顾已发生的研究和实践发展在随后的十六年中。

Kimberlyn Leary在2004年有关CM的特刊中的介绍总结了作者在该刊中讨论的许多关键思想。她解决了一个基本问题，即如何把握CM的含义，并指出它们很关键，因为它们“具有紧迫性，并且具有一种主观感觉，即普通的控制或规则似乎不再起作用”（2004年）：143）。因为它们具有短暂的质量，所以它们很及时，因此很容易错过。她指出，CM的后果是谈判者对他们做出反应的方式造成的。这些有效的定义为CM的广泛探索奠定了基础，因为CM在许多情况下和在多个分析级别中均会发生。较早的作者讨论了CM如何缩小谈判者的注意力，在不确定性条件下它们如何经常发生，他们的焦虑和惊讶因素，其变革潜力，CM中的同步性重要性以及它们的可操作性。这些想法中的许多想法再次出现在项目的第二个版本中。此外，后续的文章中还出现了许多新想法。

CM的概念在研究界和实践界引起共鸣。对于研究人员而言，CM的价值在于分析它们发生的条件及其对未来谈判进程的影响。研究人员的主要目的是在理论发展中解释和分析CM。对于从业者而言，该概念的价值主要在于其对临床或其他应用实践（如调解）的贡献。识别或创造这些生动的时刻通常被认为是揭示见解或解决僵局的机会。对于研究人员和从业人员，CM都提供了理解的窗口，从而扩大了我们对谈判过程如何展开并最终达到令人满意的协议的认识。

当前的文章集从多个方向扩展了我们对CM的理解。一个方向是重视这一概念的可塑性。就像谈判者或分析者认为自己掌握了这一时刻一样，它消失在一系列的对话或事件中。分析人员在寻求对理论发展必不可少的构造效度时，这个不断变化的特征是一个问题。正如大卫·劳斯（David Laws）所阐明的那样，这对于临床医生的诊断尝试也是一个问题。应对这一短暂时刻的一个建议是保持警惕。监视展开的动作和转弯会增加出现机会不会被错过的机会。在此过程中，另一个可能出现的故障是警惕的谈判者适应变化的方式。丹尼尔·德鲁克曼（Daniel Druckman）指出，根据强硬或柔和动作的配合，对这些时刻的反应可能会导致升级或升级后果。这两种结果都可以通过对话的构造方式（通常是第三方）来实现。正如切特·哈丁（Chet Harding）所展示的那样，即使是简单的单词也可以扭转困难的互动。但正如嘉莉·门克尔·梅多（Carrie Menkel-Meadow）所说，情况也是如此，当进一步的谈判可能有害时，“只是说不”可能是首选的回应。

向外移动，另一个方向是朝着在其中发生谈判互动的更大的环境迈进。许多组织参与者都参与谈判结果。了解这些网络的工作方式有助于进行导航。通过与关键角色，对话者或利益相关者建立联系，可以采取培养关系的形式。说起来容易做起来难，但是Deborah Kolb提供了令人信服的示例，说明了它如何工作。Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld还考虑了更大范围内的CM，分析了CM如何成为关键事件，进而可以导致更大的组织变革。在这些方向上扩展对CM的分析也将我们带入组织行为和系统分析领域。

这些文章提出的另一个方向是将谈判框架从对抗转变为协作所需的技能。这种转变被视为CM，对于处理棘手的冲突的调解员尤其具有挑战性。在人们进行不必要的提议或实施暴力的社会环境中，这也是具有挑战性的。Susskind，Sharpe和Forester的文章分别描述了这些技能，并提出了可以学习这些技能的充分理由。这些学习的技能之一是透视，正如Harborne Stewart所展示的那样，在CM中校准自己和对方的选择可能会产生很大的影响。

贯穿整篇文章的主题之一是CM的难以捉摸和扩展性。在难以确定分析或实践的意义上，它们是难以捉摸的。错过的时刻几乎无法重获。确实，我们只知道回想过去遗漏了什么。但是，这些也可能是学习时刻，其方式类似于我们进行反事实分析的方式。尽管很麻烦，但知道可能会做些什么，可以用作对未来相遇有价值的教学课程。更好的是在谈判过程中预期CM的前景。在这里，一些问题的贡献者讨论了一些实践技能，以及实验室实验的研究结果。实验可以被视为发现导致CM的条件或沉淀物的工具。

关于扩展性，这些文章涵盖了多种环境，由许多社会科学领域的作者撰写。设置包括几种类型的国际谈判，一个大型工会组织（福特汽车公司和美国汽车工人联合会），中美贸易谈判，社区发展诊所和即兴研讨会。这些学科包括社会心理学，政治学和国际关系，传播，劳动关系，博弈论，教育，政治哲学和法律。作者包括实践者和理论家；大多数贡献将理论与实践结合在一起。这种多样性表明，可以在这里，那里以及大多数地方找到CM。当然，它们对于广泛的社会互动过程至关重要。谈判研究 作为一种社会互动形式，会产生一些洞察力，这些洞察力有助于理解其他过程的流程和节奏。CM是标明对话和社交关系过渡的标点符号。它们也是“啊哈”体验，为偶然和长期的相遇提供了意义。考虑到这一点，我们邀请各行各业的读者加入我们的行列，努力学习更多有关CM的知识。