Title: Decision-Making Delay | Beyond Intractability
Headings: Decision-Making Delay
Decision-Making Delay
Delay and its Implications
Delay in U.S. Systems
Unavoidable Delay
Ways to Avoid or Block Delaying Tactics
Additional Resources

Content: Unavoidable Delay
Normally, disputants use delay to deliberately stall the decision making process. However, delay may also be the natural outcome of a difficult negotiation process. For example, if parties are involved in consensus building it can take a long time for all parties to agree on a settlement. Although there are several tactics that can be used to speed the process up, in extremely complex cases involving multiple parties and many issues, any effort to speed the process must be made carefully. Rushing can easily lead to the process breaking down or to poor agreements being made that will not hold up over the long term. Ways to Avoid or Block Delaying Tactics
In cases where a decision is taking a long time there are two key ways to break the deadlock -- both have to do with increasing the pressure on all parties to reach an agreement. One way to push negotiations toward agreement is to set an actual deadline by which a decision must be reached or the negotiations will be terminated. [ 5] The other is to shape your opponents' perceptions of the cost of delay or manipulate the actual costs of delay. Setting a deadline can have a related effect on a party's perception of costs. Though in some cases time limits present the same pressures to both sides, it is often the case that a deadline may be asymmetrical, meaning that the costs of delay are higher for one side than the other.