Christopher Voss - Ideas and Influences

Ideas and Influences

Voss contends that the principles of hostage and kidnapping negotiation are directly applicable to business negotiation. He states that kidnappers run their operations as a form of a "business", albeit an illegal business, and as such are governed by basic business principles. Negotiation tactics that disrupt businesses will disrupt kidnapping operations.

If a terrorist or criminal gang conducts a kidnapping, they have an expectation of receiving revenue in the form of a ransom within some expected time frame. If the time frame is continually extended beyond their expectations then the ransom victim becomes a form of inventory that is difficult to "turn over" and therefore undesirable. Since the business has a "sunk cost" in this "inventory" they will not discard it, but will continue to bargain for until it is "sold". Their long-term reaction will either be to avoid this type of "inventory" (meaning they will avoid kidnapping this type of person) in the future or change businesses.

This is Voss's explanation for the phenomenon observed in the kidnapping of an Ecuadorian born American citizen, José Escobar, who was leading a tour group of eco-tourists in Ecuador in 2003. The tourist group was composed principally of Caucasian Americans. Escobar, though an American citizen appeared to be a local businessman. The kidnapping gang, members of the Colombian terrorist organization ELN (Ejército de Liberación Nacional or National Liberation Army) ignored the Caucasian Americans to take Escobar. The case was resolved when Escobar escaped after 28 days of captivity.

It was later learned that the ELN had Escobar under surveillance for quite some time, so they clearly knew that the Americans would be there. Voss's explanation for them passing up these potentially lucrative kidnap victimsis that they had learned that Americans were problematic targets. Problematic in the sense that whenever they kidnapped Americans, getting a ransom was a long and difficult process. They come to learn that kidnapping a local businessman was likely a quicker and easier path to a ransom.

This strategy would be significant in combating terrorism. Many terrorist organizations use kidnapping as a source of funding. Therefore disrupting their kidnapping operations through disruptive negotiation techniques is a strategy that can be effective in disrupting terrorism.

Since kidnapping negotiation is a form of business negotiation, Voss contends that savvy kidnapping negotiators would be talented business negotiators and that business negotiators can learn a great deal from the kidnapping negotiation process.

He also contends that people who negotiate on the behalf of kidnapping victims have to form an effective working relationship with their criminal counterparts. The agreement with the kidnapper is effectively a "contract", yet there is no recourse for enforceability. The agreement itself has to be negotiated through a process wherein the process makes the agreement meet all requirements of "durability".

If this contention is true, then these strategies have tremendous application to business. Increasing the durability of agreements, or negotiating them in ways which ensures that they will be performed upon would reduce or eliminate costs associated with renegotiating contracts or the legal fees associated with filing lawsuits in an attempt to enforce contracts."