A study of styles and outcomes in construction dispute negotiation

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.