Relations By Objectives: an Experimental Program of Management-Union Conflict Resolution.

Abstract

This research is concerned with the experimental conflict management technique, Relations By Objectives (RBO) which was developed in 1975 by the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service. RBO is an array of organization change techniques, designed to de-escalate hostility and conflict within a union-management relationship, in order to create a favorable environment for improvement in the parties' relationship. The objectives of this research are to present an evaluation of RBO and to examine the results of the evaluation in the context of previous research on conflict resolution techniques. Five sites, at which RBO had been implemented, were chosen as the experimental group and a matched comparison group was identified. Questionnaires were distributed to a sample of members of management and the union within each site. The return rate was approximately seventy percent. A subset of the subjects were interviewed as well as the mediators who served as chairmen of the panels. The exploratory data analysis suggests that four of the experimental group sites experienced improvement in their union-management relationships in contrast to the comparison group. There was, however, variance within the experimental group. Additional analyses show that few differences existed between the perceptions of the management and union parties within the experimental group. However, in the site by site analysis, two sites appear to have experienced great improvement, one has experienced further disintegration of the relationship, and two other sites exhibited relatively small improvements. The conclusions support the effectiveness and usefulness of the program in general, and in particular its positive effects on contract settlement. Possible explanations for the lack of major improvement in several of the sites include: (1) changes in top personnel at the sites; (2) a lack of internal stability or unity on the part of the union, management or both; and (3) the failure to provide a system which rewards efforts (or imposes costs for the lack of such efforts) that lead to the attainment of RBO goals and relationship improvement.