Attitude-Based Negotiation Methodology for the Management of Construction Disputes

Abstract

A systematic negotiation methodology for construction disputes is presented to take into consideration the attitudes of negotiators at two complementary levels of decision making: strategic and tactical. At the strategic level, the proposed methodology employs the graph model for conflict resolution and helps negotiators find the most beneficial subset of solutions to the conflict. At the tactical level, the proposed methodology examines the most beneficial strategic decisions using utility functions to provide agreed-upon tradeoffs with respect to any conflicting issues. A construction case study is used to illustrate the proposed methodology and demonstrate the importance of incorporating decision makers’ attitudes into negotiation to better identify the most feasible decisions. The proposed methodology may assist negotiators with the challenges of conventional negotiation through the incorporation of decision makers’ attitudes into a range of analytical tools that will clarify interests, determine equilibrium outcomes, identify tradeoffs, recognize negotiators’ satisfaction, and generate optimum solutions.