The study “Increasing integrative negotiation in European organizations through trustworthiness and trust” confirmed that employee representatives (ERs), whose management perceives to be trustworthy, has a greater influence on negotiation, particularly regarding to integrative as opposed to distributive issues, and that trust partially mediates this relationship.

According to the article, recently published in the scientific journal “Frontiers in Psychology” by our researcher Patricia Elgoibar, and others researchers from others universities, the integrative negotiation in which employers and employees create value is a major necessity in the current challenging context.

The authors believe that collective labour negotiations in organizations are traditionally focused mostly on distributive issues, such as pay, working hours, and holidays. However, the current situation demands the inclusion of other issues such as remote work, sustainability, and risk prevention, the enhancement of which is a major challenge for organizations.

The objective of the study was to explore the negotiation process between management and employee representatives (ERs), analysing the roles of trust and trustworthiness. Furthermore, to achieve these results, the authors collected data from 614 human resources managers from different organizations in 11 European countries which offers a global perspective of the issue at European level.