Teaching students to SHINE in negotiation

In Professor Hoonie Kang Sanghoon’s negotiation classes, it is not uncommon to find students squaring off over a deal that exists just for the day, connecting theory to practice where pride alone is on the line. “This may be the only time they can take risks without involving actual money,” Professor Kang says, believing that freedom to experiment is precisely the point. An assistant professor at CUHK Business School’s Department of Management, the Korea-born scholar recently received the Faculty Teaching Excellence Award in the Early Career category, in recognition of a teaching approach he calls “SHINE”, built around real human interaction.

Raised to teach

Professor Kang’s path into academia seemed almost preordained. He spent part of his childhood in New York while his father pursued a PhD in economics and his mother studied education. “Being a professor has been my career goal since I was little,” he recalls, noting that his older brother was also drawn to academia and now conducts research on brain tumours at Mount Sinai.

He began his teaching career as a part-time instructor at Rutgers Business School in the United States, teaching for six semesters while completing his doctorate. The experience, he says, revealed the quiet satisfaction of inspiring students and helping them grow into better versions of themselves. However, it was after joining the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) Business School in 2021 that Professor Kang came into his own, and in the unlikeliest of circumstances.

What started as the most isolating stretch of the pandemic became the most formative chapter of his career. While most colleagues worked from home under the prevailing public health guidance, Professor Kang was among the few who came into the office each day. That brought him into close contact with the late department chair, Professor Kenneth Law. Generous with his time, Professor Law made himself available to junior faculty, and one day he encouraged Professor Kang to seize a rare opportunity: to design, launch and teach his own course. “I am forever grateful for that opportunity,” Professor Kang says.

The philosophy of SHINE

Professor Kang’s resolve crystallised into “SHINE”, a teaching philosophy built around five principles: Student-oriented, Hands-on experience, Innovation by taking risks, Nurturing and Engaging with the real world. The approach did not emerge from nowhere. He credits his doctoral adviser, Dr Terri Kurtzberg, herself a student of negotiation pioneer Max Bazerman, for shaping his methods. “I stand on the shoulders of giants,” he says. While Professor Kang was pursuing his PhD, Dr Kurtzberg gave him opportunities to teach and introduced him to leading negotiation scholars, allowing him to absorb the craft from those who helped define it.

The philosophy now takes concrete form in the classroom. Over a semester, Professor Kang runs students through 14 negotiation-simulation cases, each exposing them to a different situation: negotiating against a rival, managing a power transition, brokering a three-way coalition. The approach is simple but demanding. Negotiation research holds that people become proficient only through exposure to a wide array of situations, so Professor Kang gives them exactly that. Each simulation is followed by a debrief, with students spending up to 90 minutes dissecting what worked, what failed and why.

The reward arrives when the lessons follow students into their working lives. One recent graduate, weighing a full-time offer after a consulting internship, came to him for advice. Drawing on research on the power of first offers, known as the anchoring effect, Professor Kang advised the former student to make the opening bid. That approach paid off; the student was glad he had made the first move.

Where East and West converge

Professor Kang’s classroom is a microcosm of CUHK’s international, East-meets-West character. With half his students local and the other half from across the globe, he designs activities that turn diversity into a teaching asset. “I put a lot of effort into designing activities that encourage students to learn from one another, appreciate different cultural norms and approach negotiations from multiple angles. Even when asking a simple question like, ‘How did you start your negotiation?’, students jump in and provide 30 different answers. This is where the discussion starts.”

While Professor Kang was trained in the Western academic tradition, he brings a distinctly Asian sensibility to his teaching. He points to the Korean concept of nunchi (눈치), the subtle art of reading a room and gauging others’ emotions and intentions. He describes this as “a combination of emotional intelligence and situational awareness”, a quality that maps naturally onto skilled negotiation. As business becomes more global and deals become more cross-cultural, that fluency in reading across cultures will be an advantage students carry with them long after they leave his classroom.

Gaining skills AI cannot replace

As AI takes on more of the work once thought to be irreplaceably human, is there still a case for teaching people to negotiate? Professor Kang believes there is, precisely because negotiation, played out between people, requires interpersonal skills that machines cannot replicate. His own research has found that negotiators who lean on AI for advice tend to become more self-oriented and competitive. The antidote, he argues, lies in the qualities only real human exchange can cultivate: empathy, trust and rapport.

This does not mean Professor Kang is sceptical of technology, however. He believes that, if used with discipline, AI can genuinely support learning. The skill lies in knowing when to reach for it and when not to. When a group of students recently asked to use AI to translate simulation cases into Chinese, freeing their time for strategy, he agreed – and then he wrote clear guidelines for the use of AI in his courses. The boundary, not the ban, is what he teaches. “Even when we get help from AI, humans make the final call,” he says.

Becoming a better version of himself

For Professor Kang, the Faculty Teaching Excellence Award affirms a mentality rather than a milestone. He sees it as recognition for a personal philosophy he sums up simply: “Keep on grinding to be a better version of myself.”

He intends to keep empowering students to challenge assumptions and learn through hands-on practice, preparing them for an uncertain, AI-shaped world with a distinctly human advantage: the ability to sit across a table from another person, understand their perspective and find common ground.