Analysis of disputes towards effectiveness of negotiation in the Sri Lankan construction industry : contractors’ perspective

Abstract

Sri Lankan construction industry is one of the growing industry from the recent past upon end of the three decade civil war. Because of the multi-party involvement in the construction industry and complex in nature, parties are always prone to face numerous disputes in their journey while attempt to safeguard their respective interests. Once the disputes emerged amongst the parties, they seeks suitable ways to solve the disputes in an amicable manner to the parties however it is not always possible for them to reach such amicable solution while maintain the interest of the all parties. Compare with the other approaches available for dispute resolutions, negotiation said to be as easiest, very efficient and economical and less time consuming process. However, the negotiation in the Sri Lankan construction industry is an undesired process for the parties in disputes due to higher rate of its failures. This research were conducted to analyses disputes towards the effectiveness of negotiation in the Sri Lankan construction industry by identifying the causes for the positive and negative outcome of the negotiations and investigating the relationship between negotiation outcome to project characteristics, professionals involved in negotiation, time taken for negotiation, monitory value involved, and causes of dispute etc. Data was collected and analyzed using document analyses methodology using quantitative data analyses techniques respectively. The research concludes that unethical, unprofessional practice of the construction professionals and appointment of in-house team of client as contract administrators and aging of negotiation along with some of the project characteristics such as types of the client, procurement method etc. were major contributors possess significant relations to the negotiation outcome despite the common factors: unpreparedness, skill level of negotiator, model and tactics, cultural barrier and gender mix in the team were found in the literature review.