MANAGEMENT CHIEF NEGOTIATORS, BARGAINING STRATEGIES, AND THE LIKELIHOOD OF IMPASSE IN PUBLIC-SECTOR COLLECTIVE-BARGAINING

Chief negotiators are uniquely positioned to affect the level of colle ctive bargaining conflict because of their roles as external represent atives and information processors during negotiations The nature of th ese effects should be of special interest to government administrators who are concerned about improving their self-resolution track record in collective bargaining. In this article, the authors use a unique 19 92 survey of municipal chief negotiators to examine the impact of vari ous chief negotiator characteristics on the likelihood of impasses occ urring in negotiations with municipal police unions. The findings supp ort two major conclusions. First, chief negotiators who are positioned higher in the management hierarchy experience fewer collective bargai ning impasses than do those who are lower in the organization. Second, negotiators' strategies and personality characteristics significantly influence the likelihood of an impasse but, in general, demographic c haracteristics of negotiators and environmental factors do not.