MBAX 6005 Week 9 Negotiated Change Proposal Example

A Negotiated Fare Agreement for Riverbend Regional Transit: One-Touch Reporting, a Small Inspector Team and a Repair Fund the Parties Control, Defended Against Its Structural Critics

Student Name

Walden University

MBAX 6005: Organizational Perspectives and Implications for Leaders

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

A Negotiated Fare Agreement for Riverbend Regional Transit: One-Touch Reporting, a Small Inspector Team and a Repair Fund the Parties Control, Defended Against Its Structural Critics

The Change

This proposal asks Riverbend Regional Transit, the four-garage composite system in this course, to adopt a negotiated fare agreement among the drivers' union local, the operations department and finance, administered by a standing labor-management fare table. The agreement has four parts. First, drivers report a failed validator with a one-touch button on the driver console instead of being asked to enforce fares; the report goes straight to the repair queue. Second, the agency funds a team of six fare inspectors who board buses at random and handle fare questions, so no driver ever confronts a rider over payment. Third, operations agrees to pull any bus whose validator has been reported dark for two consecutive days, at the next scheduled layover, using a spare bus held for that purpose. Fourth, finance publishes recovered fare revenue by garage each month. The fare table controls the validator repair fund, so it can pay for repairs and spare-bus hours without returning to the full capital process.

Why Each Party Would Sign

The proposal rests on the political diagnosis reached earlier in the course: the validators stayed broken because no group with power gained from fixing them. The agreement gives each group something it wants in exchange for something it values less. Fisher et al. (2011) distinguish positions, what a party says it demands, from interests, the needs beneath the demand. The union's position has been "no fare enforcement." Its interest is drivers' safety, since fare disputes are a common start of assaults on buses. The inspector team serves that interest directly, and one-touch reporting asks drivers for something safe and quick. Operations' position has been "every bus runs." Its interest is avoiding missed trips, which a held spare bus protects. Finance gets the repairs it asked for and a monthly figure that shows the result.

Table 1

What Each Party Gives and Gets

Composite organization.

Four Frames of Implementation

Bolman and Deal (2017) note that significant change creates issues in every frame: people need new skills, roles need realigning, conflicts need an arena and losses need to be marked. The plan addresses each. For the human resource frame, drivers receive a fifteen-minute briefing on the one-touch button, and inspectors receive de-escalation training before they board. For the structural frame, fare enforcement is formally removed from the driver's job description and assigned to the inspector team, ending a role conflict the course found earlier. For the political frame, the fare table is the arena, with its own budget and a monthly meeting. For the symbolic frame, the agency holds a short ceremony at each garage retiring the old enforcement notice from the driver's cab, and answers the garage story drivers tell about the operator assaulted over a fare with a public commitment that no driver will be put in that position again.

Three Objections at Full Strength

A structural critic would raise three objections. First, diffused accountability: a table of four parties means no single person answers if the validators stay broken. Second, a missing owner: the boarding moment still has no department that owns it, only a committee. Third, fragility: negotiated deals depend on the people who made them, and a new union president or operations director could walk away.

Answering the Objections

On accountability, the agreement names a chair for the table, the deputy general manager, who reports monthly to the general manager on repair times and recovered revenue. Accountability is shared for decisions but held by one person for results. On ownership, the critic is partly right. The agreement does not create a department that owns the boarding moment; it creates a set of commitments that cover it. That is a deliberate choice, because the earlier analysis found that a structural owner without the parties' agreement would be resisted. On fragility, the agreement is written into a side letter to the labor contract, which survives changes of leadership until the contract is renegotiated. It remains more fragile than a reorganization, and the proposal accepts that cost in exchange for consent. Kotter and Schlesinger (1979) note that negotiated change is slower and can be undone, but that it is often the only way to proceed when a group with power stands to lose.

How Success Will Be Judged

Within six months, the share of buses with a working validator should exceed 95 percent, dark-validator reports should be repaired within two days on average and recovered fare revenue by garage should rise each month. If none of these move by month four, the table should review whether the political diagnosis was wrong.

References

Bolman, L. G., & Deal, T. E. (2017). Reframing organizations: Artistry, choice, and leadership (6th ed.). Jossey-Bass.

Fisher, R., Ury, W., & Patton, B. (2011). Getting to yes: Negotiating agreement without giving in (3rd ed.). Penguin Books.

Kotter, J. P., & Schlesinger, L. A. (1979). Choosing strategies for change. Harvard Business Review, 57(2), 106-114.