Integrated Grievance Handling Mechanisms in Universities

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Integrated Grievance Handling Mechanisms in
Universities A Viable Alternative?

• Hilary Astor
• Professor of Dispute Resolution
• Faculty of Law
• Sydney University

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Outline

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

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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
  1980s, creates a system in which interest based,
  rights based, and sometimes power based, methods
  are linked together

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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?

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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

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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.

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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.

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SPIDR Developmental Model of Conflict Handling
in Organisations

1. An absence of defined dispute resolution
   processes
2. Grievance processes based on rights and
   adjudication
3. Interest based processes added into the mix
4. An integrated system which introduces a
   systematic approach to resolving conflict that
   focuses on the causes of conflict

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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
  organisations 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.

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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

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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

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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.

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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 universitys reputation
• (Astor, Improving Dispute Resolution in
  Australian Universities Options for the Future
  (2005) 27 Journal of Higher Education Policy and
  Management 49.

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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

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The challenges for development of integrated
systems in universities

• Cultural issues
• The higher education marketplace and its
  consequences
• The scholar in the managers hat
• ICMS is new and unfamiliar

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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/HODs approach to
  workload allocation
• Access to the car park is being restricted
• Protecting Academic freedom

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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

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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

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The scholar in the managers 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