Despite increased interest in public sector collective bargaining, a survey of recent attempts to build theory about the dynamics and outcomes of union-management negotiations in public organizations reveals that little progress has been made. One approach that appears fruitful is interorganizational analysis. In an interorganizational context, organizations interact with other autonomous organizations to make joint decisions that have implications for both parties and for the larger system. This study focuses on five interorganizational variables that are useful for understanding the collective bargaining process in the public sector: (1) goal divergence; (2) stability of the relationship; (3) organizational dependence; (4) conflictual behavior; (5) contractual change.

From these theoretical concepts, five propositions are derived which serve as the basis for the research hypotheses. The hypotheses were tested on a sample of 60 cases drawn from a population of 535 collective bargaining negotiations in New York City from 1968 through 1972. The test of the research hypotheses resulted in these conclusions: (1) a substantial amount of the conflictual behavior in public sector collective bargaining is explained by goal divergence, stability of the relationship, and asymmetry of relative dependence favoring one of the organizations; and (2) contractual change is explained by goal divergence, conflictual behavior, and asymmetry of relative dependence favoring one of the organizations.