Shirli Kopelman

Kopelman is a leading researcher, expert, and educator in the field of negotiations at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business.

Kopelman's strong academic background and hands-on experience with managers and executives led her to develop an innovative positive negotiation framework. Negotiating Genuinely^® was founded by Shirli Kopelman to enable people to sharpen their leadership skills in experiential settings. Her clients come out with practical strategies that translate into substantial benefits.

Kopelman’s research focuses on a positive process of mindful and strategic display of and response to emotions, and its power to transform social exchange beyond an instrumental negotiation task. Mindfully aligning emotions to strategy in relational settings is key to sustainable business profits, alongside individual and organizational well-being. Her research on social dilemmas suggests that rather than being driven by economic utility models, cooperation and social value creation is better explained by a four-factor logic of appropriateness: “What does a person like me (identity), do (heuristics/rules), in a situation like this (recognition), given this culture (group)?” For example, recognition of economic power may lead to relatively higher or lower cooperation, depending on the cultural background of negotiators. Kopelman is fascinated by how people negotiate meaning and co-create value in the context of multi-faceted complex social interactions, particularly in business settings.

Kopelman holds a PhD in Management and Organizations and an MS in Organization Behavior from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Kopelman is Past-President (2017) of the International Association for Conflict Management and Former Faculty Director of Research and Business Practice at the Center for Positive Organizations. Kopelman has received outstanding teaching and prestigious research awards.