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It provides a chance for the architects to take advantage of the low client involvement and they may tend to discourage from the claims resulting from his/her defaults. The conflicting position of architect often increases the difficulty of negotiation and possibility of disputes.

Last but not the least, improper negotiation style will restrict the negotiations. Actually, different strategies adopted will give the different outcome of negotiation. Due to the different roles and self-interests between the contractor and architect, they will adopt different strategies to draw the settlement point from the middle towards their expected outcomes. For example, Pickavance (1997) mentioned that either or both parties may inflate the opening demands, misrepresent their positions or interests, withhold sensitive or potentially damaging information, use threatening behaviour or adopt an intransigent stance until the other side is ready to move. According to Smith＊s (1992) article, he also mentioned that adopting improper negotiation styles will cause inefficient negotiation. For example, starting with a win-lose approach allows pressure, threats and intimidation. If negotiator starts with this approach, it inhibits negotiator from reaching rational settlement by giving pressure on other party to give up their demand. Besides, there are many negotiation styles which are adopted depending on the situations. Sometimes, the negotiation strategies should be changed during the negotiation. If the variety of negotiating style of negotiator is not enough, it may result in failure of negotiation because the negotiator unable to change the negotiating style to tackle a particular style of negotiation. Also, negotiator may easily put the emphasis on the price up or down in negotiation process, it results in overlooking the scope of works, establishment of cost basis.

2.2.3 Negotiation Performance

Negotiation is a decision-making process in which people mutually decide how to allocate scare resources. (Curhan, et.al, 2006; Pruitt, 1983). The negotiation performance should be divided into two aspects. They include objective behavioural outcome and social psychological measures (Curhan, et.al, 2006). Thompson (1990) proposed that measures of behaviour and performance in negotiation can be classified into two aspects which are economic outcomes and social psychological measures.

Economic outcomes refer to ※explicit terms or products of the negotiation such as whether or not an agreement has been reached§ (Curhan, et.al, 2006). They focus on the outcomes or products of negotiation exclude the process or methods used to achieve such outcomes. There are three measures of economic performance (Thompson, 1990). They include mutual agreement, creating resources and claiming resources. Also, Rahim＊s (1992) classified the negotiation outcome into two types which are functional outcomes and dysfunctional outcomes. Functional outcomes are positive outcomes. The examples of functional outcomes are improving organizational decision making, finding out alternative solutions to a problem, forcing people to search for new approaches, leading to synergistic solutions to common problems, stimulating innovation, creativity and growth, and enhancing individual and group performance. In summary, the functional outcomes relate to solving problems and reach an agreement. In the construction industry, the major objective of