Green Business II

When I was a boy in Bogotá, I remember hearing a woman hollering “botellas, papel” (bottles, paper) on the street periodically. I can’t tell if it was once a month, once a week or more frequently. She was a recycler who bought glass bottles and old newspaper for a very low price to resell them to the recycling plants. That was her way to make a living, her business and the business of many other very poor people. Even then, Bogotá was a large and growing city requiring many, many of them to do the job. And these people didn’t have a motor vehicle. They walked through the streets dragging a wooden cart. Even the cart was environmentally friendly, as we say nowadays, for the wood was biodegradable, and the wheels were old ball bearings: they were reusing them. I never knew for certain how they carried the paper and the bottles all the way to the recycling plants, but I imagine several of them bringing the collected material to a street where a “zorrero” was waiting for them. I have to clarify that “zorrero” is the term we used in Bogotá to refer to a man who drives a “zorra”, literally a one-horsepower vehicle. A “zorra” was, in the Bogotano dialect, a large wooden cart drawn by a horse. Again, an environmentally friendly vehicle since the shafts, wheels and tires were all reused, and the wood was biodegradable. The horsepower was, of course, 100% organic and, when the moment came for the equine, 100% biodegradable as well.

The “zorras” shared the streets with the faster motor vehicles that had much, much more horsepower. As I said, I was a small boy and I don’t have a clear recollection of how heavy traffic was in the Bogotá of the beginnings of the 1960’s. But as the capital of the country, the city of opportunities for many Colombians, it grew very fast, becoming a large and diverse metropolis. Along came an amazing growth in the number of motor vehicles, which caught the planners, if they existed there and then, off guard. The infrastructure of the city became quite insufficient and, in an underdeveloped country, resources, especially money, are scarce. Streets and avenues maintenance and construction couldn’t cope with all that traffic. “Zorras” were on the streets along with cars, trucks, and buses, slowing down the flow of motor vehicles generating huge traffic jams and driving Bogotanos nuts. “Zorras” and cars were not sharing but competing unfairly for the scarce and inadequate street space. The recycling model was starting to be seen as an inconvenience.

Simultaneously, the television programming in the two channels - no satellite or cable TV then - was being inundated by what we called “enlatados” or in English “canned programs” coming from the United States. Everybody with a TV set at home was impressed by the prosperity and sophistication of the characters in those programs. Soon we would like to imitate that lifestyle. Visiting the United States was a dream for many of us. Since many couldn’t afford the trip we would have to feel satisfied with the stories and the souvenirs brought by those lucky ones that could take the jump. They spoke of many very tall skyscrapers, modern highways with tangled bridges where traffic flowed very fast and smoothly. They spoke of ice cream parlors, and restaurants where food wasn’t served to the table but the client brought it by him or herself to the table, or could take it directly to the car using the drive through window. Food was ready in a matter of minutes and everything was very hygienic, since food was placed on neat disposable boxes, dishes and cups. There were amazing machines where people would put coins in slots and get, without human intervention, cans of ice cold soft drink and many other goodies. And of course, the fortunate tourists brought, together with sophisticated battery-operated toys, some cans to drink Coca Cola or Pepsi Cola in front of us, just to show off.

We felt like we were living in the Stone Age, still using and reusing soda glass bottles, and going to restaurants where nothing was disposable, and on top of that, getting served took ages. Most of our cars were also very old; we were maintaining them too long and the new models they saw in the United States were fancier, more powerful and faster.

Even grocery shopping was a completely different experience. Americans would go to supermarkets where everything was neatly packed in plastic and polystyrene foam containers, and the store would provide as many plastic bags as needed to accommodate all the purchase.

How antiquated were we still using those rustic handmade baskets and going to the farmer’s market. Instead of plastic bags we were still using paper for packaging.

We needed to do something to get out of the underdevelopment and urgently. And so we did and have done ever since. We stopped reusing glass bottles and now we recycle all of them. The reason? Bottles eventually become brittle. My question is, nowadays, do glass bottles become brittle after the first use? Has anybody done any serious study about how many times on average can a bottle be reused before becoming brittle? Taking into account the environmental impact of reusing vs. recycling, wouldn’t it be more cost-effective and environmentally friendlier to test the bottles for brittleness and separate those that can be reused from those that need recycling? This sounds like a good environmental business compromise.

And Colombia along many other underdeveloped countries came into the era of sophisticated supermarkets where we could buy food neatly packaged and displayed in plastic and polystyrene foam packages, as well as canned goods: canned soft drinks, canned beer, canned food, etc. Farmer markets were gradually displaced by supermarkets. Of course, these supermarkets would provide plenty of plastic bags so that customers wouldn’t need to bring those ugly old baskets. They were a thing of our underdeveloped past; we needed to ride the train of development. We started to use plastic bags and disposing of them.

And the big chains of fast food restaurants started to pour in our cities. As our economy became more active our lifestyle had to follow that rhythm as well. We didn’t have any more the time to have lunch at home or to sit in a restaurant waiting to be helped and our food brought to our table. The solution was fast food restaurants for our ever more hectic life. Plus it was more hygienic: those colorful boxes and cups were disposable. Even on weekends it was fun to go to those restaurants because they had boxes for kids, which in addition to the food, included a collectable toy. A great catch for us kids, and we would beg to go back urgently to collect another toy.

I think that was the time we stopped calling ourselves underdeveloped country and jumped to the category of developing countries.

Green businesses

Staying in a Westin Hotel recently I found the sign to hang from the door knob whose picture you see on the left. I'll let you observe it for a moment before continuing to read this post...

This is one sign where the hotel management supposedly promotes ways to conserve natural resources. Nothing apparently wrong with that. If you tried to read it, however, the resolution of the image is not enough to comfortably read it, because Blogger didn't allow me to upload a higher resolution image, so I'll transcribe the first paragraph:

"You have the option to decline housekeeping service for the day. For helping us conserve natural resources, we are happy to offer you a $5 gift card for use at participating food and beverage outlets within our hotel or 500 SPG® Startpoints^SM redeemable at checkout"

Do you know why this sign caught my attention?

Because I don’t see why, declining housekeeping service for a day makes a green option. What is the natural resource they are conserving? The way I see it, they are saving money, period! Aren’t the people who do the housekeeping natural resources? And I don’t mean to be disrespectful with them or anybody else; in fact, I consider myself to be one more natural resource. Now back to my argument. By declining housekeeping, some of these people will not conserve their jobs and their families depend on their small income (and tips). It saves money to Westin but certainly collaborates with unemployment of the poor; and I have good reasons to believe that conserving the environment is for the benefit of all: rich and poor.

And if they are talking about saving money (conserving the company’s green US Dollar bills), what other kinds of savings is the management of the Westin doing? Fewer or smaller bonuses for the CxOs? (Replace the x in the acronym by E, F, I, etc., and you get whom I’m referring to)? And what about reducing the number of high executives? Money-wise one of them makes for many, many, many housekeepers, and since they probably wouldn’t apply or need to apply for unemployment, the government, or the taxpayers, save money. But in addition, housekeepers probably use public transportation to go to work instead of their individual automobiles, and so the impact they produce on the environment is lower than the executives’. What about power consumption per capita? I bet housekeepers consume less kilowatts per person than the high executives, way less! And I can continue rambling on and on and on with this kind of comparisons…

If the Westin management really wants to make an environmental choice, they should look for other alternatives that are environmentally and socially better. And yes, they can keep my $5 gift card because I didn’t hang the card on the door. By the way, I don’t mean to scorn the Westin Hotel … only. This goes to any other hotel with a similar policy.

What I do choose every time I stay in a hotel for one or two nights is to hang my towels and not to place this card on the bed so that they do not change the towels or the bed linens unnecessarily. That saves water and detergent waste. Another way to help reduce waste is to take the remaining shampoo, conditioner, body lotion, etc. and finish them at home. Remnants are discarded otherwise. It may seem minuscule if I'm the only one doing this, but adding up all the guests it really means fewer little plastic bottles per day discarded. Hopefully, they recycle the bottles.

Now that I think of it, what do businesses really mean by green? People normally associate green with the environment and if that is so, businesses need to be more careful and stop invoking the environmental conscience of people for purposes that are not related to the environment.

Let’s call things by their name. By green, are they really implying the environment? Why not blue? Don’t we call our planet the "blue planet?" There is much more extension of blue in the environment of the planet than there is green. What about yellow? The yellowish desert is a rich ecosystem which we also need to care for. And what about all the other colors of nature? Our environment is beautifully multicolor, so let’s use the right words and the right names for the right things. Green is just one of the multitude of colors of nature and, as I have shown here, people’s association of green with the environment may be used to manipulate their conscience for other hidden purposes.

Heaven

If heaven exists I have been there many times with My Love. After one of our journeys in October of 91 our twin daughters were conceived.

After Math

The student strike finished several weeks ago and I believe it’s time for reflection. This is the fourth and probably the final post related to the student stoppage at the University of Puerto Rico, a topic that caught the attention of the local and international media and has given me an opportunity to reflect on conflict resolution, a long time topic of interest. This complex and long conflict has also served as a great source for specific examples of things that actually occur in conflict: a great learning experience for me, and hopefully for my occasional readers.

I’ll try to apply the four principles of Principled Negotiation to some specifics of the UPR conflict; I barely scratched the surface on my previous post. Anyway, a post or two in a blog do not give enough space for such purpose and besides, I have only some information and rumors that circulated before, during and after the student stoppage. I was not directly involved in the actual negotiations, so I wish someone from each party did this same reflection exercise, but with detailed and direct knowledge of the process. I'll try to stick to the information and filter out the rumors, but I'm only human.

There is a lot we all can learn. Let me start by showing the application of the four principles. The examples, of course, are not exhaustive of all the issues at stake but illustrate my view of the problem from a Principled Negotiation point of view.

1) Separate people from problems: As pointed out in my previous post, people from both parties and their affiliations are completely irrelevant for the negotiation process. What is important is to identify the problems. In my view there is one major problem to be solved and is related to money: the University has a fiscal deficit and has to look for ways to find new revenues or savings. One source of revenue is the tuition and other fees the students pay, and so an increase in tuition and additional fees would be a potential source of additional revenue. But money is tight for the students too, so this kind of measures affects their pockets: a source for conflict. The University administration identified a potential source of savings by imposing restrictions on students getting scholarships and tuition waivers. Again, these restrictions affect some of the students’ economy and thus become a source of conflict.

2) Focus on interests, not positions: The position of the University Administration was to increase tuition beyond the agreements reached a couple of years ago, add extraordinary fees for the following three years and impose restrictions on students receiving both federal government scholarships and tuition waivers. The position of the students was to not accept any tuition fee increase beyond what had been negotiated, extraordinary fees or restrictions on scholarships and tuition waivers. If we focus on their positions, apparently there is no reconciliation. Nonetheless, if we identify the interests of both parties there is good reason for hope. The University Administration interest is to have no fiscal deficit. The students’ interest is to have affordable higher education of at least the same quality as they are used to. Neither the University Administration, nor the students are interested in the University losing money or, even less, going bankrupt. Along the same lines the University is not interested in losing some percentage of the student population who may not afford large fees. We have started to identify common grounds.

3) Invent options for mutual gain: Parties have to look at the problem from different perspectives and at different times: in the short, medium and long term; therefore all the parties with stakes, not only the students and University Administration, have to design action plans that urgently generate new or alternate sources of revenue and savings for the University. For instance, from the time perspective, could it be possible to look at the University’s economy in a period of three years or more so that some fiscal deficit in the first year be managed with excess in the following years when projects and business can start to produce revenues or savings? To mitigate part of the deficit and looking from a fee perspective, could the students manage some tuition fee increase above the current value? Could the students handle a temporary extraordinary fee? How much could they handle? (This is a first step towards setting levels of desire). From a savings perspective, could the University look for savings in energy costs by investing in energy-efficient and power management systems? I, for example, believe that the University wastes energy in cooling empty rooms or keeping the same A/C settings for rooms with few people as when they are full. Could the University achieve some savings in other utilities, water, telecommunications, etc? From a business point of view, could the University identify some sources of income by selling or renting some assets? Could the University leverage the knowledge and expertise of its employees, for example the faculty, to provide services that generate new business, e.g. strengthening consulting, or offering new strategic courses and programs in continued education and training? Could the University generate energy by investing in new technologies, such as renewable energy generation? If Windmar Renewable Energy in Puerto Rico invested in the largest solar park in Latin America (thanks to Dr. Alberto Ramirez for sharing this link with the professors in my Department), couldn’t UPR get bondholders for projects like this one? I believe there is knowledge and expertise for projects like this. I guess it’s a matter of making a business plan. I see not only the University but students benefiting from such enterprises: they provide real-life practices where they can work, learn and be paid, just like the internships and the Coop programs. I don’t claim these are my original ideas and I recently received information that the President of the University had proposed many along the same lines when seeking to be appointed. I’m sure the list can grow much more by engaging the University Community in solving the problem. I’m sure there is plenty of talent in many of these and other business opportunities. UPR would not be the first one. It’s a matter of creating spaces and opportunities in an adequate environment. It’s a matter of putting to practice what we teach in business, communication, administration, planning, project management and other related fields.


4) Insist on objective criteria: Let’s estimate with technical and financial analyses what expectations are reasonable for all parties; after all, the problem is University finances. Let’s talk about feasibility, about timelines, about investments and ROI, about cash flow, about existing expertise and knowledge, about HR, about current infrastructure and assets… Let’s stop using manipulative negotiation tactics and let’s start organizing in task forces the diverse talents available in the University and setting timelines. I have seen in the University very successful inter- and multidisciplinary teams work in research projects; why not for generating businesses for the University. It’s a matter of engaging the University community in a goal that is a win for all. If the problems affect us all, the solutions benefit us all. Let’s talk business: the University being a non-for-profit organization does not imply it being a for-loss organization!

The part I have serious difficulties is finding acceptable Alternatives To Negotiated Agreement. In buying-selling goods or services there may be other providers-customers. In marriage conflicts there is divorce. Someone may suggest there are other universities and other students but I have serious trouble with these alternatives... I’ll leave this as an exercise to the reader and myself.

I listed in my previous post some apparent consequences of the prolonged strike and those consequences seem to indicate that not reaching an agreement has catastrophic consequences for both parties. This is to me a symptom of notorious weaknesses on both sides. My interpretation is that a settlement is a “must”. The choice between agreement and no agreement in this case feels almost the same as choosing between walking both parties a step, however small, away from a cliff, or jumping into the abyss, pushing along all the stakeholders. I will let the reader do the analysis.

Setting the levels of desire regarding student fees require analysis of the finances of the University's and the students. That's beyond the scope of this post. Students could've conducted or continue to carry out a study of their part, while the University looks for other sources of income and savings. That way, all the parties can set realistic bottom-line, aspiration and wish levels.

The strike finished several weeks ago, but I perceive the stoppage time was left to run too long. In long conflicts reproaches tend to plague the process, and resentments arise. In conflict resolution there is a time and there is timing. It’s not a matter of rushing; it’s a matter of keeping as much control as possible so that negotiations really progress; it’s a matter of avoiding the use of manipulative tactics and neutralizing them when they occur. I perceive that not all has been said or done in this particular conflict, but I hope the community at the University of Puerto Rico takes time to reflect on what happened and learn from the mistakes so that, next time around, we take advantage of a crisis to grow and be creative.

After Nash’s paper on non-cooperative games there have been significant advances in game theory, which I claim is applicable to conflict, and models include more features that occur in real life, like limited rationality, incomplete information, and coalitions between players. Models are including dynamic features by incorporating physics and information theories. Still, answers as to what the mixed strategies are for all the players to obtain their best payoff cannot be feasibly computed; but that’s no reason to give in. Math tells us there are one or more equilibria, which speaks of at least one optimum and several suboptima. Principled negotiation provides one possible approach and a set of tools to search for those equilibria.

Finally, I remember reading somewhere that in Principled Negotiation one sees the other parties not as adversaries but as problem solvers. This brings us back to the stable equilibrium I wrote about in Conflict and Hope, but in this case it happens not out of fear but respect. After Math, we are left with our Humanity: our irrationality and our immense reasoning capabilities; let’s use our human nature wisely.

Principles of Principled Negotiation

This is the third of a series of posts that I decided to write due to the 64-day student stoppage at the University of Puerto Rico. The first two are found in the following links:

http://jfvrcorner.blogspot.com/2010/06/conflict-and-hope.html


http://jfvrcorner.blogspot.com/2010/06/math-belief-and-hope.html

My first source for definitions is always the dictionary and in this case resorted to the Merriam-Webster on-line. I was looking for the word “negotiation”. Why was I looking for the word? Because a few weeks ago, in the middle of the student stoppage at the University of Puerto Rico, two persons avoided the word “negotiation” or any other derived from that in front of the press. Instead, they referred to the process as “dialogs” conducing to “understandings”. Since those two persons - oh what the heck, the president of the board of trustees and the president of the University - must’ve known better than I do, I decided to be very careful treating the subject to avoid big flaws in technicalities I, as an aficionado on the topic, could’ve made. The first definition in the M-W dictionary didn’t help much, but I decided to follow the link to “negotiating” and there I found the following definitions:

“intransitive verb : to confer with another so as to arrive at the settlement of some matter
transitive verb 1 a : to deal with (some matter or affair that requires ability for its successful handling) : manage b : to arrange for or bring about through conference, discussion, and compromise ”

That definition reinforced my concept of negotiation and I felt happy for that, but I still found something missing. I went then to the most popular information source on the Web and here is what I found in Wikipedia:

Negotiation is a dialogue intended to resolve disputes, to produce an agreement upon courses of action, to bargain for individual or collective advantage, or to craft outcomes to satisfy various interests. It is the primary method of alternative dispute resolution.

Negotiation occurs in business, non-profit organizations, government branches, legal proceedings, among nations and in personal situations such as marriage, divorce, parenting, and everyday life. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negotiation]

The “dialogue” and the “understandings” mentioned by the presidents seemed to be in that definition and I guess a stoppage happens due to a dispute, doesn’t it? Add to that the fact that it occurs in “non-profit organizations, government branches, ...”, and the University of Puerto Rico is both. All the elements in the definition appear to match the situation. Satisfied?

Well... no, so I decided to dig deeper. My next source was my beloved antiquity; my leather-bound Encyclopedia Britannica from 1988. If you read carefully I didn’t refer to Wikipedia as an encyclopedia because I didn’t want to get into the conflict about what a real encyclopedia is. Some of my closest peers in academia do not consider Wikipedia an authoritative source, so for their benefit I searched high and low for negotiation in Britannica. Guess what?

I couldn’t find negotiation or conflict resolution, so I opted for Britannica on-line [http://www.britannica.com/], which gave me no direct definition but “assorted references” (http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/408114/negotiation) to a bunch of topics, but no luck with the kind of concept I was looking for. I thought the closest one was related to Diplomacy and I quote what I found:

“the established method of influencing the decisions and behaviour of foreign governments and peoples through dialogue, negotiation, and other measures short of war or violence. Modern diplomatic practices are a product of the post-Renaissance European state system. Historically, diplomacy meant the conduct of official (usually bilateral) relations between sovereign states.”

And in Diplomacy: Diplomatic Tasks…

“Beyond these functions, the ambassador negotiates as instructed. Negotiation is a complex process leading to agreement based on compromise, if it reaches agreement at all. (The object of international negotiation is not necessarily to reach agreement; it is to advance the interests in an ambassador’s charge.)”

Wow! I could not believe my eyes… “The object of international negotiation is not necessarily to reach agreement; it is to advance the interests in an ambassador’s charge.” Would that mean that as long as everybody smiled and shook hands for the picture, someone could be twisting arms behind the scene? I had been born in the crude realm of diplomacy and with no anesthesia!

I decided to walk on friendlier camps, so I followed the link to social interaction but nothing directly related to negotiation. I insisted on on-line resources different from my own personal definition. I wanted to legitimate my views – yes, I’m using another negotiation tactic -, and I found the following two definitions:

General: Bargaining (give and take) process between two or more parties (each with its own aims, needs, and viewpoints) seeking to discover a common ground and reach an agreement to settle a matter of mutual concern or resolve a conflict. [http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/negotiation.html]

This one seemed to be in my favor, or perhaps with my flavor, but still my ignorance on possible technicalities didn’t let me sleep. My next step was to look for something legal, and I found the following:

1) It is a process by which the involved parties or group resolve matters of dispute by holding discussions and coming to an agreement which can be mutually agreed by them. It also refers to coming to closing a business deal or bargaining on some product. 2) It also means exchange of negotiable instruments such as bills of exchange, cheques etc in exchange of goods, service or money. [http://www.legal-explanations.com/definitions/negotiation.htm]

At this point I was starting to think that, after all, I was not so ignorant and stopped my search for more support on those technicalities because the online resources seemed to agree with me. If one charitable reader can confirm or deny my view as compared to that of the persons I mentioned in the first paragraph of this post, I would sincerely appreciate getting me out of this merciless doubt, particularly referring to Puerto Rican law.

I don’t pretend to give a treatise or complete lesson on negotiation but, at least, put some of my ideas and knowledge in order so that anyone interested may learn a thing or two about it. Conflict management is a complex, intricate and overwhelming subject. Just to see a list of the diversity of topics visit http://www.mediationworks.com/mti/certconf/bibs.htm.

I want to refer to “Principled Negotiation” to avoid any further uncertainty. Again, I looked for definitions online and found the following, which I’ll quote in a convenient order below:

“Principled Negotiation is an interest-based approach to negotiation that focusses [Sic] primarily on conflict management and conflict resolution. Principled negotiation uses an integrative approach to finding a mutually shared outcome. First published in the book "Getting to Yes", Principled Negotiation is used mostly in North America and is more popular amongst Academics and Mediators than in Business. Principled Negotiation has become synonymous with the more popular phrase "Win Win " - originally taken from Game Theory. Although Fisher and Ury drew from various disciplines in their 1981 book "Getting to Yes" (including NLP), many Mediation Practitioners and Academics have subsequently contributed in answering the challenging question: How can we best achieve Principled Negotiation in many different contexts?” [http://www.negotiations.com/definition/principled-negotiation/]


“Principled negotiation is the name given to the interest-based approach to negotiation set out in the best-known conflict resolution book, Getting to Yes, first published in 1981 by Roger Fisher and William Ury. The book advocates four fundamental principles of negotiation: 1) separate the people from the problem; 2) focus on interests, not positions; 3) invent options for mutual gain; and 4) insist on objective criteria.” [http://www.colorado.edu/conflict/peace/treatment/pricneg.htm]

The first quote places principled negotiation in the context of Academics and Mediators, which seems to reinforce my personal opinion that this kind of negotiation would’ve been adequate in the resolution of the conflict that led to a 64-day student stoppage at 10 out of 11 campuses of the University of Puerto Rico. Another point to highlight from that definition is that principled negotiation has become synonymous with the phrase Win Win, which I mentioned in my post http://jfvrcorner.blogspot.com/2010/06/conflict-and-hope.html, that originated in Game Theory, also referred to in my same post.

The second definition states the four fundamental principles of this kind of negotiation. I’ll explain them briefly and try to give some examples, including some from the conflict over the fiscal deficit of the University of Puerto Rico between students and the administration.

1) Separate the people from the problem: It means that it doesn’t matter who we or the other parties’ people are or what affiliations they have. In principled negotiation what is relevant is the problem to be solved. In the particular problem at the University of Puerto Rico (UPR), who the president of the Board of Trustees, the University or the General Student Council are, or what their political or any other affiliations are was irrelevant; after all they have a term in their positions and eventually someone else will be appointed or elected. Negotiation should’ve centered on how each party could contribute to solve the fiscal deficit foreseen for this and the following three years or so.

2) Focus on interest not positions: There is an interesting example from the book “Getting to Yes” [Fisher, R. Ury, W. and B. Patton. Getting to Yes. 2nd Edition. Penguin Books. 1991], in which two men quarrel in a library over whether a window should be open or closed. The librarian enters and she asks to one why he wants the window open [his position]: “to get some fresh air” [his interest]. She asks the other man why he wants the window closed [his position]: “to avoid a draft” [his interest]. After thinking one moment she opens a window in the next room, bringing fresh air without a draft [the solution]. In this example there is one additional ingredient, the librarian, who acts as a mediator. In the case of UPR, the position of the Administration in one of the issues was to set extra fees and increase tuition. The student’s position was to not accept any extra fee and keep the current tuition fee conditions negotiated a couple of years ago. In this particular problem the interest of the University is to solve the fiscal deficit and keep the University sustainable. The student’s interest was to continue having an affordable higher education. Of course there were some other issues at stake but my idea is to illustrate this principle.

3) Invent options for mutual gain: In the library problem the option invented was to open the window in other room which solved the problem by identifying the interests of both parties. I won’t enter into details of the UPR problem to not extend this post. Again, my idea is to illustrate the principle. The reader that is aware of the UPR conflict can invent her or his own options.

4) Insist on objective criteria: Just like in Nash’s theory parties or agents are searching equilibrium since in such state everyone maximizes its payoff. Objective criteria are sought through reasoning so as to approach the rationality needed in Nash’s theory.

In principled negotiation parties also analyze alternatives to a negotiated agreement, i.e., actions that might be taken if no agreement is reached. A normal practice in analyzing these alternatives is for each party to make a list of actions that can be taken in case of no agreement. I leave as an exercise to any UPR reader to make such list in the case of the student stoppage.

What actions could the UPR Administration have taken in case of no agreement?

What actions could the students have taken in case of no agreement?

After the stoppage finished, there are some important lessons to be learned from what actually happened. The actions I list below are related to the Alternatives To Negotiated Agreement for both parties:

- The communications from CES (Puerto Rican Council for Higher Education) to UPR regarding the potential loss of the license to operate;

- The Probation Status on UPR accreditation by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE) which is the institutional accrediting agency;

- Potential loss of eligibility for federal government funding according to the communication from the Department of Education of the United States;

- Delay in academic term completion and student graduation;

- Risk of losing admission to graduate schools or job offers to graduating students;

- Delay or cancelation of summer session, including the Coop program, Summer Practicum required for some programs, and summer internships, among others;

- Deterioration of University facilities due to lack of maintenance.

This list can be enlarged by the reader and actions assigned to one party, the other, both or to third parties. Once a list of actions is completed, the next step is for each party to improve those that can be improved and select the best one. This is known in Principled Negotiation as Best Alternative To Negotiated Agreement, or BATNA. On the other end, select the Worst Alternative of the list or WATNA for short. Preparation for negotiation includes estimating one’s own and the other parties’ BATNA and WATNA.

These alternatives are important because the BATNA establishes the power that each party has in the negotiation process, while the WATNA provides information about weaknesses. Both set the stage for a realistic negotiation and help establish the limits of what is being negotiated [http://www.mediate.com/articles/notini1.cfm].

The last step in the preparation is to establish the “Degrees of Desire”:

Wish: The best result out of the negotiation that you can imagine;

Aspiration: a reasonable level you can achieve in the negotiation; and

Bottom line: The very least you can live with; the point where you are willing to walk away.

Based on the BATNAs and WATNAs, each party should clearly establish its degrees of desire and estimate the other party’s for each issue at stake. The Wish and Bottom line establish a region for each party’s negotiation. The overlap of these regions is known as the settlement/bargaining/contract zone [http://epublications.bond.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1030&context=drcn]. Somewhere in this region a settlement point for the dispute is located, and, I would argue, that in this region the Nash’s equilibrium is also located (see the figure below for a depiction of the contract zone).

Whether each party in the UPR conflict ,or the mediator that intervened at the end used this approach is not known to me, although I believe, based on what I could observe, it wasn’t used. Anyway, this post, the longest or one of the longest in my blog, is quite insufficient to cover conflict management or negotiation. As said before, this is a complex and overwhelming topic, but my idea was to show very basic information about negotiation with two purposes in mind: 1) To motivate people toward this fascinating subject; and 2) to serve me as a pressure release valve during the student stoppage.

Math, Belief and Hope

I left some loose ends in my previous post, so before I start discussing negotiation let me start clarifying some issues regarding my previous post. Negotiation will be the next topic. I promise.

My post on conflict and hope may lead many to believe that my hope is based on some simplistic argument: some equilibrium points in Game Theory and based on an old paper, written even before I was born. I invite those thinking that way to read Nash’s paper and tell me if the argument is simplistic. Others may criticize me as a crude reductionist, trying to explain complex human behavior using a mathematical model. As I said in my post, there are concepts that need to be defined further for the model. The payoff is one and, as I also said, we would have to find ways to include non-quantifiable variables in conflict. Someone could ask how to put moral principles as part of the payoff. To that I say principles are not negotiable. Another issue is related to rationality, but rationality in this case does not refer to reason or to the quality of reasoning, but, as I also said, rationality is based on utility theory, i.e. maximizing a payoff. How good could then be the model? To answer to this question I will summarize two experiments.

I found them in a book I’m currently reading: A Beautiful Math (Siegfried, Tom. A Beautiful Math. Joseph Henry Press. Washington, D. C. 2006.). In the first experiment, the biologist David Harper at the University of Cambridge fed a flock of 33 ducks in two separate patches of a pond at the university’s botanical garden. The strategy was to toss precisely weighted pieces of white bread. In one of the patches the feeder would toss one piece of bread every five seconds. In the other patch the feeder would toss one piece every 10 seconds. According to the author, ducks took about a minute to organize in two groups, approximately two thirds of them where bread was being tossed every five seconds and the rest, where bread was being tossed every 10 seconds. What this shows is not that the ducks know math but that they naturally organize themselves to maximize their food intake, their payoff.

The second is based on the work of another heavy-weight scientist: John Maynard Smith. He invented a simple animal-fighting game between hawks and doves. In this theoretical experiment Maynard Smith showed that one single strategy for the two types of birds would not produce a stable population, hawks aggressively and doves passively. The two types of birds in this theoretical experiment need to combine their strategies, doves sometimes behaving like hawks and vice versa, to become an “evolutionary stable strategy”. If hawks always fight for food, they’ll kill each other to extinction while food is wasted away. On the other hand, if doves never compete they will starve to extinction running away from any bird, including other doves. Of course, this is a theoretical experiment but shows clearly why a mixed strategy is necessary. A similar example I give my students when speaking of distributed intelligent agents. In my example, two or more collaborative agents will never go through a door because their courtesy yields to giving way to each other. On the opposite end, two competing agents will never go through the door fighting to get through first. This example also shows that mixed strategies work better than single strategies. Thus, Maynard Smith postulates that in evolution theory fitness should be replaced by utility and selection by rationality in the sense of game theory.

These examples show that the concept of rationality in game theory does not relate to reasoning but to maximizing payoff. The examples also suggest that the competing parties do not necessarily carry out mathematical computations, but that rationality is imprinted in evolution. To alleviate partially the dilemma nature versus nurture that may arise from this last statement, let me just say that the plasticity of the nervous system is a result of evolution but how this plasticity develops, is related to nurture: environment, education, culture, etc. A similar statement could be said of other systems in living organisms.

The next issue that may arise is how one construes hope from such an abstract mathematical expression. I would reply that some people found their hope in abstract expressions like the pursuit of happiness, achieving enlightenment or perfection or loving each other, including one’s enemies. I mean not to compare the moral or practical valor of these statements but only how abstract they all are. My point here is that I can ground hope, at least partially, in that conflict may turn positive and there are solutions where everybody can win. The problem paradoxically lies on finding rationality, when human reasoning is involved. My response is through principled negotiation but, as I said, this will be the topic of my next post.

Conflict and Hope

One of my reading assignments was “Fights, Games and Debates” by Anatol Rapoport. Professor Harry Schwarzlander was teaching a course on General Systems Theory at Syracuse University. It was 1985 or 1986 and I was starting my doctoral studies. Not only the reading but the discussions that Professor Schwarzlander promoted in class led me to develop a keen interest on conflicts and peace, first from a mathematical point of view and later on from a negotiation and conflict resolution perspective. At first I was disconcerted by the prospects of the mathematical concepts of stable and unstable equilibrium in the international conflicts of that time, particularly the cold war. I, a pacifist, had to face that mathematics seem to indicate that unarmed nations in conflict, were in a state of unstable equilibrium. Basically, a tiny pebble could become the force that would drive competing nations into war. On another end, comparably armed nations in conflict could be in a state of stable equilibrium. My only explanation to that was fear. Sides would avoid provoking an armed conflict, and peace could be maintained out of fear. The USA-USSR state of affairs at that time seemed to confirm this theory. Yet, I was not satisfied and so I decided to start studying conflict on my own.

Let’s step back a little on my reading assignment and its provoking title. I have to resort to my long term memory, very fragile, and to a few summaries I found on the book, to rebuild Rapoport’s theory, since I left this and many other books in Bogotá when I moved to Mayagüez, Puerto Rico. In Rapoport’s view, there are three kinds of conflicts:

1. Fights, in which the purpose of any party is to inflict harm to the opponent;
2. Games, where the purpose of any party is to outwit the opponent; and
3. Debates, in which the purpose of any party is to convince the opponent or any bystander.

Evidently, this taxonomy provides interesting insight about conflict. Fights in the pure sense assume no calculations or strategies. Games are based on rationality and strategic decisions based on the analysis of alternatives. Debates involve argumentation to make the opponent see things the way we see them. In an ideal situation, logic would be the right tool in a debate, but humans are not purely logic and it is not uncommon to see people using techniques of fights, e.g. threats, or of games, e.g. stratagems. Not only debates used mixed techniques, but games and fights combine them too. If one classifies war as a fight, which seems reasonable, in addition to attacks, threats, and other pure fight techniques, war involves a great deal of strategy. Many sports, and sports could be classified as games, allow some degree of fight: ice hockey in the USA is a good example. Artificial as it may seem, Rapoport’s conflict taxonomy results very useful when analyzing conflict as a process.

Conflict is natural and some authors claim it is necessary to prevent stagnation, but this, though, should be qualified. Ideally, conflict should not lead to fight, but that is idealism. Also, parties should be willing to resolve the conflict, otherwise conflict stagnates itself. One example is a couple that, to protect their children or their public image, do not voice their quarrels. Both the cause for complain and the conflict are stalled and I would hypothesize that conflict will escalate till it explodes. In this example, what could have been kept as a constructive debate could become a destructive fight.

Someone could argue that most human conflicts are debates and this makes sense since, at least, conflicts could start as one party tries to convince the other about one or more issues. As suggested before, people in debate use a variety of techniques, i.e. some strategy planned ahead of time, and some responses that arise in the heat of the situation. Strategies are typical of games while those unplanned or apparently irrational responses could seem more typical of fights. But realistic and interesting games not only involve pure strategy. Players, even in Chess, respond with surprises, threats, traps, etc.

The argument for conflict as debate is strong, but when we look at a good debate we see parties have prepared their strategy for argumentation so that their expressions, including body language are all in tune. After the opening statement, nonetheless, a good debater should be prepared to apply all the skills to respond adequately to the surprises the opponent brings to the table. Strategy should consider contingencies, having contemplated as many “what ifs” as possible and have the best replies to those unexpected situations. A good debater should analyze the opponents as carefully as possible during preparation, just like a game player analyzes opponents. But that is not enough. Traps will be set, emotions will enter the scene and all that planning may seem useless. Isn’t that exactly like a game? But in game as in conflict preparation isn’t useless if done carefully.

It is here that borders in Rapoport’s taxonomy become quite artificial or my rusty memories of the book do not allow me to see clear borders between the three grand types of conflict. Additionally, I do not know of any other general conflict taxonomy and, in the literature, I have only found some conflict-specific taxonomies, e.g. political conflict.

Anyway, this is convenient for my argument because I now bring another perspective to human conflicts: conflicts as games. This highly controversial perspective for some humanistic schools of thought brings hope to conflict resolution and I will explain this further down.

For my own internal debate and any external debate with any reader, I have some heavy-weight supporters of this perspective: John Von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern, John Nash, Harold W. Kuhn, Anatol Rapoport, and many others. For the reader familiar with negotiation tactics I am using one known as “association”. Some of my “associates” (pardon my modesty) may be immediately recognized but, if not, I invite the reader to look for any or all of them in Wikipedia.

Now, you may wonder why treating human conflict like games brings hope. I invoke now the non-cooperative games that gave Nash an excellent topic for his doctoral dissertation and became a seminal work in Economics for which he received a Nobel Prize in 1994. The name of this kind of games is quite eloquent: each player for him/herself. This is not the aspect that gives me hope. What gives me hope is that in this type of game there is an equilibrium point where, and I quote Nash, “each player’s mixed strategy maximizes his payoff if the strategies of the other players are held fixed. Thus each player’s strategy is optimal against those of the others.” [http://www.lsi.upc.edu/~ia/nash51.pdf].

One historic note. When I got interested in this topic I had to struggle to get a physical copy of Nash's paper; the World Wide Web and Google were not even a figment of the imagination. That gives you an idea of how old I am. Now, I googled it out and I could reread it with almost as much difficulty as the first time: that guy is a genius :-)… and I’m not :-(.

Back from my digression, my hope resides on the fact that, based on Nash’s theory, each party in a conflict can maximize its payoff; sort of a win-win situation, if all the parties play their best mixed strategy. This is an ideal situation, because how does a party know what its best strategy is. The equilibrium points assume total rationality of the players, but who defines rationality or how? The debate about rationality has been going on for millennia and I’m not sure anyone has agreed on a definition, except, maybe, in mathematics regarding utility theory where rationality refers to maximizing a payoff function. Then, the next question comes to mind: How do we define that payoff, when many variables in conflict are not quantifiable? That is certainly not trivial, but I have never argued this was going to be easy. The equilibrium points give us a target at which we should aim so that, when in conflict, we all get the best we can; we all can win. If I were to continue with my mathematical arguments, we could approximate equilibrium through an iterative process. The final question is how? My answer is through negotiation.

P.S. I have been writing this post for several days, motivated by the longest student strike I have seen at the University of Puerto Rico. I had never been caught in the middle of this kind of conflict before. writing it has been my personal therapy and I hope will serve someone else too. I will now start to write my next post on negotiation as a sequel to this.