Catastrophe Model of Construction Dispute Negotiation Behavior

The saying sedulousness is evidently unity of the major sectors of Hong Kong edifice economy, and as Kenneth and Sai (2006) noted, buildings, the result of look industrys activities, are part of the built environment in which several piece activities occur.As a result of the heavy reliance on team work and collaboration, spin activities are often prone to contravention, although it is apparent that this could also be obtainable in separate organizational settings. Infact, these authors presuppose that the traditional construction contracting methods in several countries creates adversarial tendencies in the enter team, which tend to foster bout and therefrom dateing behaviors in construction activities.It is a known fact that one of the primary indicators of construction victory is the timely completion and delivery of the project. However, for any construction project to be completed and delivered as scheduled, a cooperative working environment is vital.In this ligh t, Harmon (2003) suggested that the feature article adversarial relationship and lack of a cooperative environment of construction organizational settings constitute one of the major factors that affect timely completion of construction projects.Beca uptake of the apparent importance of conflict watchfulness in construction, as well(p) as in some other organizational settings, several scholarly works exist on conflict, conflict behaviors and conflict management. The term conflict has been severally defined, from different perspectives, even within construction literatures, as a result, several different understandings of conflict behaviors, and by extension conflict management styles, have been proffered.Kenneth and Sai (2006) argued, however, that the numerous construction literatures on conflict have essentially focused on conflict arouses, prevention and management within a contractual and/or legal context. They suggested that equal importance should be accorded the human fa ctors involved in conflicts, since according to them, conflicts is stemmed and handled by the people involved, thus the role played by human factors, especially behavior, should be considered an constitutional part of conflict management.It is this call that this paper intends to heed. This paper intends to look at construction conflict from the behavioral perspectives using Rene Thoms Catastrophe Theory. It has been suggested that continuous changes in human behaviors often display a discontinuous lapse.In this light, it has been argued that the catastrophe supposition provides a grounded approach for modeling conflict behavior in construction (Kenneth and Sai, 2006 p.439). This paper emphasizes the human factor in conflict by examining behaviors in response to conflict, known as conflict behavior it then attempts to use a model of the catastrophe theory to explain construction conflict behaviors.ConflictConflict is a natural outcome of the interrelationships between individuals and groups. As a result, it is a very common and general phenomenon that can barely be conceptualized in a simple definition. The interaction between individuals and groups brings to the fore, individual differences in goals, objectives or perspectives.The tension created by these differences, when identified by the parties involved is usually the cause of conflict. Several authors have offered different definitions or concepts of what constitute conflicts (Allred, 2000), however, there is hardly any definition that completely subsumes the entirety of conflicts from both the individual or organizational context.For example, Rahim et al (2000) positing that conflict is borne out of human interactions explain that conflicts begins when one individual perceives that his/her goals, attitudes, values or beliefs are not compatible with that of the others (Rahim et al., 2000 p. 9). Here conflict is defined from the context of individual relations.Examining conflict from an organization co ntext, Roloff (1987) argue that conflict begins when members of a team/organization imbibe in activities that are considered incompatible with those of colleagues within their network, members of other collectivities, or independent individuals who utilize the services or products of the organization (Roloff, 1987 p.496 quoted in Rahim, 2002).