Strategic Negotiations – A Theory of Change in Labor–Management Relations

Strategic Negotiations makes a significant contribution to the literature on strategic choice (the explicit structuring by management and labor of business and bargaining strategies that use the economic and political environment as a framework to create bargaining power). The authors intentionally build upon previous work in A Behavioral Theory of Labor Negotiations, but this book also is a successful application of the three-tiered collective bargaining theory first developed in The Transformation of American Industrial Relations. Although scholars have identified strategic initiatives in the collective bargaining relationship, recent research has continued to emphasize economic explanations. This book provides an alternative framework of analysis.... [Strategic Negotiations] provides abundant evidence, both theoretical and empirical, that the traditional concerns of industrial relations researchers are still relevant.―Industrial and Labor Relations Review

Richard E. Walton is Wallace Brett Donham Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, the author of Up and Running: Integrating Information Technology and the Organization and coauthor, with Robert McKersie, of A Behavioral Theory of Labor Negotiations, also from Cornell. Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld is Senior Research Scientist at MIT and coauthor of Knowledge-Driven Work, Valuable Disconnects in Organizational Learning Systems. Robert McKersie is Sloan Fellows Professor of Management Emeritus at the Sloan School. He is coauthor of The Transformation of American Industrial Relations, also from Cornell.