Nonspecific Compensation Another way to generate alternatives is to allow one person

to obtain his objectives and compensate the other person for accommodating his interests.
The compensation may be unrelated to the substantive negotiation, but the party who
receives it nevertheless views it as adequate for agreeing to the other party’s preferences.
Such compensation is nonspecific because it is not directly related to the substantive issues
being discussed. For instance, Advanced Management Consulting could decide to lease in
the suburbs and give Samantha all new office furniture. In this case, Emma gets her preferred
location, while Samantha receives new office furniture as nonspecific compensation
for agreeing to the new office location.
For nonspecific compensation to work, the person doing the compensating needs
to know what is valuable to the other person and how seriously she is inconvenienced
(i.e., how much compensation is needed to make her feel satisfied). Emma might
need to test several different offers (types and amounts of compensation) to find out
how much it will take to satisfy Samantha. This discovery process can turn into a distributive
bargaining situation, as Samantha may choose to set very high demands as the
price for locating in the suburbs, while Emma tries to minimize the compensation she
will pay.