ERIC Number: ED172310
Record Type: Non-Journal
Publication Date: 1977-Aug
Pages: 14
Abstractor: N/A
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
Behavioral Theories of Negotiations and Their Relation to Public Employee Bargaining.
Herring, J. Donald
Recent research and theory on collective bargaining focuses on bargaining attitudes and behaviors. Walton and McKersie divided all bargaining into distributive and integrative. Distributive bargaining is competitive and based on an assumption of conflict of interest. Integrative bargaining is cooperative and based on the theory that power can be created rather than merely divided. They also defined intraorganizational bargaining as bargaining done within one bargaining group rather than across the table. This intergroup bargaining is usually done before actual collective negotiations begin. Walton and McKersie in their attitudinal structuring model identified four attitudinal dimensions to bargaining: motivational tendencies, beliefs about legitimacy of the other party, level of trust, and degree of friendliness. Herring found that those bargaining teams who come to closure most rapidly and with the least amount of negative feelings were those that consciously kept themselves on the task. Later researchers concentrated on the relationship between attitudes of the bargaining parties and bargaining impasse and agreement. From this research, it appears that there is a positive relationship between attitudinal structuring and the evolving behavior patterns in negotiations. The more positive the attitude, the greater the chance that the negotiations will evolve in an integrative fashion, even on those items that are by definition distributive. (Author/JM)
Publication Type: Information Analyses; Speeches/Meeting Papers
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A