Words evolve in their usage and meaning over time, but few words in
the business language have changed as much as the term "win-win."
Once confined to the literature on conflict management, the term has
been co-opted in the trade press and often used incorrectly in place of
the term "compromise." This etymological study traces the lineage of
the term from its appearance in the academic literature in the 1970s
to its proliferation in the trade press beginning in the early 1980s.
Two interpretative errors are described and the effects of these errors
on the meaning of the term are detailed.
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