After several decades of training in IBB and its implementation in labour-management relations, this study seeks to understand how, in practice, this approach resonates with union negotiators and is actually used in collective bargaining processes. Reporting on the findings of an empirical study involving forty-five union negotiators working in the private sector, most of whom had practised IBB several times over recent years, the results of this study highlight both the limits and multiple impacts of this approach on company-level bargaining. The results demonstrate that these union negotiators did not hesitate to appropriate IBB and shape its principles and methods based on their needs and the context in which they intervened. This “imaginative appropriation” of IBB and the innovative practices deriving from it demonstrate not only the existence of porous boundaries between the distributive and integrative approaches and “mixed bargaining” (or “mixed motive bargaining”) but also the different forms that the latter can take in collective bargaining. Lastly, although the union negotiators interviewed rarely reported applying IBB in an integral way, this study nevertheless demonstrates the extent to which this approach has, through diverse forms of appropriation, been a fundamental source of change in collective bargaining practices.

Keywords: Collective bargaining, interest-based bargaining, trade unions, private sector, Quebec