Research into the moderating effects of progress and quality performance in project dispute negotiation

• There exist moderating effects of progress and quality performance.
• The moderating effects of progress and quality performance are different.
• Satisfying progress and quality performance can ease the tension of the conflict.
• Progress and quality performance can help improve negotiation outcomes.

Project disputes are inevitable. However, for disputes to be settled, a contractor is faced with the dilemma of choosing between an extension of the time for completion under its entitled rights, and expediting to avoid delay. In order to decide which strategy is the most beneficial, this paper explores the moderating effects of progress and quality performance on the relationship between bargaining power (dependent variable) and its critical factors (independent variable). To achieve this, we conducted a questionnaire survey. First, through a study of the literature and expert interviews, we identified 11 factors of bargaining power (as well as which ones were the most critical) using a principal component analysis to calculate the factors' influence weight on bargaining power. Second, we adopted moderated multiple regression (MMR) analysis to examine how progress and quality performance affect the relationships between these critical factors and bargaining power. The result suggests that there are nine MMR models that have a significant moderating effect on these relationships. We then identified six of these models with the strongest relative moderating effect. The results illustrate that progress and quality performance can help improve negotiation outcomes. Therefore, when project disputes occur, the contractor's best strategy is to strive to reduce the project time loss, guarantee the quality of the project, and gain the owner's recognition, which will help to resolve the project dispute successfully through negotiation, and achieve their shared intended goal.

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