Integrated Grievance Handling Mechanisms in Universities – A Viable Alternative?

1. Integrated Grievance Handling Mechanisms in Universities – A Viable Alternative? Hilary Astor Professor of Dispute Resolution Faculty of Law Sydney University

2. Outline • What are ICMS? Where did they come from? • Do universities need ICMS? • What are the challenges for introducing ICMS in universities?

3. Alternative dispute resolution and Dispute Systems Design (DSD) • In an organisation, an ADR plan is designed to make greater use of interest based methods of handling disputes • Dispute Systems Design, developed in the late 1980’s, creates a system in which interest based, rights based, and sometimes power based, methods are linked together

4. William Ury, Jeanne Brett and Stephen Goldberg Getting Disputes Resolved: Designing Systems to Cut the Costs of Conflict (1988) Jossey Bass, San Francisco. Step one - Diagnosis • What sort of disputes and disputants are there? • How much disputing? • How are disputes being handled and why? • What is it costing? • Is it effective?

5. Step 2 – design a system for resolving disputes (Ury et al) • Focus on interests, not positions • Emphasise negotiation – early and often • Use low cost interest based options • If interest based processes do not work, use low cost rights based mechanisms • Arrange procedures in low to high cost sequence • Provide ‘loop backs’ – so that the parties can use or return to low cost interest based methods at any point in the system • Make the system self-reflective • Consult, train, evaluate and revise system

6. Further developments in DSD • Systems for managing conflict in organisations should be integrated with other management systems • A system for handling disputes needs to be appropriate to the culture and core values of the organisation • Those who use the system should design it • Conflict is not pathology – it is normal • The system must be used, have multiple access points, ‘loop forwards’.

7. Integrated Conflict Management Systems • Society of Professionals in Dispute Resolution (SPIDR) Designing Integrated Conflict Management Systems: Guidelines for Practitioners and Decision Makers in Organisations, 2001, No 4, Cornell Studies in Conflict and Dispute Resolution, Ithaca NY.

8. SPIDR – Developmental Model of Conflict Handling in Organisations • An absence of defined dispute resolution processes • Grievance processes based on rights and adjudication • Interest based processes added into the mix • An integrated system which introduces a systematic approach to resolving conflict that focuses on the causes of conflict

9. SPIDR – characteristics of an integrated system • Multiple methods of resolving conflict, both interest based and rights based, appropriate to the organisation. • Multiple access points to these DR mechanisms. • Options for all types of problems and all people • Resolving conflict is integrated into the organisation’s policies, structures and daily operations. • Emphasis on prevention of conflict by methods such as listening, mentoring, conflict coaching, informal problem solving • Conflict is regarded as providing important information about systemic problems in the workplace.

10. Ongoing Challenges for DSD/ICMS • Rigorous testing and evaluation? • Are systems always created in a participative manner? • Does the designer have a neutral role? • Hidden conflict and the perspective of minorities

11. Do universities need ICMS? Crises and opportunities • The level of litigation by universities is increasing significantly • State ombuds have noted an increase in disputes and a national university ombuds has been proposed • Cost of university conflicts is very high • Diverse (possibly conflicting) policies and practices for conflict handling

12. 2. Ombuds • Annual reports of State ombuds reveal increase in number and complexity of disputes involving universities • NSW Ombudsman DP Complaint Handling in Universities • 2001 Senate Committee on Higher Education recommended a university ombuds.

13. 3. Cost of university conflicts • $$$ costs of rights based processes, especially litigation • Cost of staff time, including expensive senior management time • Emotional and career damage to those involved in conflict • Loss to university of staff or staff engagement with work • Ripple effects on colleagues • Damage to university’s reputation (Astor, ‘Improving Dispute Resolution in Australian Universities: Options for the Future’ (2005) 27 Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management 49.

14. 4. Diversity of policies and practices • Where are universities on the SPIDR developmental model? • Are interest based processes used as much as they could be? • Achievements in developing policies and procedures for student disputes, staff misconduct, EEO etc – but are they integrated? • Are they used for the appropriate disputes? • Conflicts between processes e.g. UNSW between provisions of Inquiry and Enterprise Agreement

15. The challenges for development of integrated systems in universities • Cultural issues • The higher education marketplace and its consequences • The ‘scholar in the manager’s hat’ • ICMS is new and unfamiliar

16. Conflict and the culture of universities • ‘Controversy is the lifeblood of a university that is doing its duty.’ Ian Chubb • Controversy is the lifeblood of an academic who(se) … • Department is being re-structured • Disagrees with the Dean/HOD’s approach to workload allocation • Access to the car park is being restricted … • Protecting Academic freedom

17. The Higher Education Marketplace • Expansion and amalgamation of universities and higher education institutions • Restructuring of disciplines, faculties and departments • Students as paying ‘customers’, directly or through HECS • Management of academic ‘productivity’ • Regulation and re-regulation of research funding

18. Consequences of cultural change in universities • Top-down management of change in organisations that are traditionally collegial • Universities ‘punch drunk’ with change • Increase in conflict

19. The scholar in the manager’s hat • Managers of academic conflict are often in role for short terms • They have little training or experience • Typically, as soon they have gained some experience they are replaced by a novice