A Study of Styles and Outcomes in Construction Dispute Negotiation
Publication: Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
Volume 132, Issue 8
Abstract
The adversarial nature of the construction industry contributes to the germination and manifestation of construction disputes. Negotiation between the disputants is most often the first attempt in getting disputes resolved. During negotiation, personality characteristics of the disputants affect their behavior and thus the outcomes. Understanding the negotiating behaviors and negotiation outcomes is therefore of both academic and practical value. This paper reports such a study conducted with construction professionals in Hong Kong. The Rahim Organizational Conflict Inventory-II was used to measure the negotiating styles of construction professionals. Taxonomies of negotiation outcomes were developed through a principal component factor analysis. Three functional and four dysfunctional negotiation outcomes were identified. Based on these results, the relationships between the negotiating styles and negotiation outcomes were examined by the use of the multiple regression analyses. The findings suggested that the use of obliging, dominating, and avoiding styles are less influential in achieving functional negotiation outcomes. However, integrating negotiating styles is found to be useful to achieve functional outcomes and the use of comprising styles is a practical approach in resolving dispute. These findings are therefore supportive of the notion of the contingent use of negotiating styles.
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Acknowledgments
The writers are thankful for the constructive comments of the reviewers. The work described in this study was fully supported by a CityU Research Grant (Project No. UNSPECIFIED7001597).
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Published In
Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
Volume 132 • Issue 8 • August 2006
Pages: 805 - 814
Copyright
© 2006 ASCE.
History
Received: Jul 13, 2004
Accepted: Nov 23, 2005
Published online: Aug 1, 2006
Published in print: Aug 2006
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