Conflict and dispute regularly feature in the construction industry. Mediation is
generally regarded as an effective means to resolve disputes due to its flexibility,
cost-effectiveness and non-threatening process. Reaching "win-win" settlement is the
desired outcome of mediation. A "win-win" settlement can be seen as one that
encourages parties to uphold their contracts when one party achieve its profits and the
other party would still be better off. However, this desired outcome is not always
achieved. Logrolling is an effective strategy for achieving integrative trade-off, by
which each party concedes on low priority issues in exchange for concessions on
issues of higher priority to themselves. There is no literature on the empirical work of
logrolling to mediate a "win-win" settlement. This research fills the gap by studying
the effectiveness of logrolling to assist disputants to achieve "win-win" settlement.
Logrolling can be described as procedures that generate jointly improving proposals
from non-Pareto optimal alternative towards a Pareto optimal alternative. However
these logrolling models follow the solution path which guides parties negotiate over
inefficient offers and end with an efficient compromise, in which way negotiators
have to consider offers which they should never choose. Highest-level integrative
agreements are considered efficient. Efficiency in negotiations is in some sense,
equivalent to the efficient frontier. Therefore a conceptual model of logrolling in
mediation is proposed through which parties could improve the joint value by
bargaining exchange and get convergence along the efficient frontier. Parties are
proposed to begin with their most preferred position and concede at minimum loss in
exchange for maximum benefit to the other party. To achieve it, a multi-objective
decision making (MODM) model is employed to propose approximate efficient
frontier and assist parties to engender "win-win" settlement.
To operationalize the conceptual model, a web-based mediation system is developed
to facilitate parties to achieve "win-win" settlement in a user-friendly environment.
The system can be accessed on website http://www.cdrru.org:8000/mediation/. The
system includes 3 processes: reality test, preference identification and logrolling.
Reality test is proposed to test parties' concession rate and assist disputing parties to
get ready for achieving "win-win" settlement. The preference identification is
designed to assist parties to identify the preference of each bargaining alternative.
Reality test and preference identification are designed for logrolling information
collection. The logrolling process is to provide user-friendly suggestions for parties to
make efficient trade-off, which involves (1) when to concede; on which issue (3) for
which party and (4) how much should be conceded.
Based on the above conceptualization, a mediation experiment is used to examine
whether the mediation system can assist parties to achieve the "win-win" settlement,
where the mediation system is to serve as a mediator in action. The experiment is
designed to collect data to compare (1) the logrolling outcomes between accepting the
mediator's suggestion and those rejecting the mediator's suggestion; (2) the logrolling
outcomes between far from efficient frontier and close to efficient frontier; (3)
expected logrolling outcomes and actual logrolling outcomes. As for the evaluation
requirement, it should be under the same logrolling data set to evaluate objectives (1)
and (2). It is better to examine objective (3) under customized logrolling data set. In
this research, objective (3) is evaluated both under the same logrolling data set and
under customized logrolling data set, so that the differences in results under the two
situations can be illustrated for comparison. The experiment has two stages. In Stage I
the experiment is conducted 'under the same logrolling data set'. In Stage II the
experiment is conducted 'under customized logrolling data set'.
The results are evaluated by 4 criteria: joint value, concession rate, substitute rate and
welfare rate in examining objective (1). The substitute rate is taken to be one party's
loss in terms of the other party's gain. The welfare rate is taken to be the gain in joint
value in terms of one party's loss. The results positively support the hypothesis that
accepting the mediator's suggestion can achieve greater joint value, make greater
integrative concessions, reduce substitute rate and enhance welfare rate in bargaining
exchange, than those rejecting the mediator's suggestion.
Efficient frontier in economics, is where alternative is worse than what they could
achieve. Based on the concept of efficient frontier, the mediation system is developed
to assist parties to achieve the "win-win" settlement. It is believed that the subjects
moving closer to the efficient frontier can achieve greater joint value, make greater concession, with lower substitute rate and higher welfare rate, than those farther from
the efficient frontier. The results are evaluated by the concession level, joint value
level, substitute level and welfare level, which represent to what extent the outcomes
are optimal or how much room for improvement. The results show that the closer to
the efficient frontier, the lesser the room of improvement on concessions and joint
value, and the more optimal the substitute rate and welfare rate. Thus efficient
Frontier theory can be used to support the mediation system to facilitate negotiators to
achieve "win-win" settlement.
The logrolling-difference degree (L-DD) is defined as the measure for comparison
between expected logrolling outcomes and actual logrolling outcomes. The smaller
the L-DD, the closer are the actual outcomes to the efficient frontier. It is found that
the L-DD in bargaining range is 4.4% in Stage I and 11.43% in Stage II. The L-DD in
reaching agreement is 2.37% in Stage I and 8.46% in Stage II. With replicating prior
work, the L-DD in reaching agreement task is smaller than in bargaining range task,
since subjects can achieve more efficient trade-off in the logrolling process, assisted
with the mediation system.
The results also reveal that negotiators who make greater concessions to the other
party do not place themselves at a disadvantaged position, however, reluctant to make
concessions does result in suboptimal outcomes.
Literature on social dilemmas assume that actors only focus on their own outcomes.
However, the findings reveal that subjects do give some weight to their counterparts.
Since negotiation is in essence decision making in value distribution between self and
the other, the logrolling outcomes of both self and other are conducted. It is shown
that, driven by self-interest motivation, the subjects distribute more value on "Self
and less on "Other" than expected. However the difference is not significant, with
value distribution on "Self" (F=1.01, P<0.05; T=0.27, P<0.1) and "Other" (F=1.07,
P<0.05; T=0.69, P<0.1), respectively.
In conclusion, the mediation system is consistent with the logrolling conceptual model
and is effective to assist parties to achieve "win-win" settlement.
| Date of Award | 15 Jul 2011 |
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| Original language | English |
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| Awarding Institution | - City University of Hong Kong
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| Supervisor | Sai On CHEUNG (Supervisor) |
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