Mediating and Moderating Effect of Tension on Withdrawal: Commitment Relationship in Construction Dispute Negotiation

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Abstract

The success or failure of a negotiation depends on the commitment of the negotiators for a settlement. Withdrawal refers to a situation in which a construction negotiator loses the interest to continue with a negotiation. A withdrawing negotiator is likely to abandon a negotiation. It is proposed that the higher the commitment of the negotiators, the less likely they will lose interest and hence a greater chance to achieve negotiated settlement. Furthermore, feeling tensed or relaxed is having a bearing on the cognitive reasoning of a negotiator. A certain level of tension helps negotiators stay focused on the disputing issues and engenders commitment. Tension is affecting commitment thus withdrawal. The roles and impact of tension on the withdrawal-commitment relationship are investigated in this study. It is hypothesised that: (1) tension mediates the withdrawal-commitment relationship, and (2) tension moderates the withdrawal-commitment relationship. With data collected from experienced construction dispute negotiators, regression analyses were conducted to test the hypotheses. Tensioned negotiators are generally more committed to a negotiated settlement than their low-tensioned counterparts. However, if the withdrawing tendency reaches its threshold value, the loss of commitment of high-tensioned negotiators is much quicker than their low-tensioned counterparts. This reminds managers that optimal level of tension can mobilise human resources to the betterment of a negotiated settlement, but excessive level tension can raise the state of withdrawal of the negotiators and lower commitment. In this regard, management may adjust the tension level by varying the settlement targets as well as changing the memberships of the negotiation team.

Keywords

Project Team Emotional Exhaustion Role Conflict Affective Commitment Role Ambiguity 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Notes

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to Mr. Fung Kong for collecting data for the study. The content of this chapter has been published in Volume 138(10) of the Journal of Construction Engineering and Management and is used with the permission from ASCE.

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Copyright information

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Construction Dispute Resolution Research Unit, Department of Civil and Architectural EngineeringCity University of Hong KongHong KongPeople’s Republic of China

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