MLDR 6175 Week 11 Final Conflict Analysis Example

The Lantern Hall Stage Calendar Dispute: A Final Conflict Analysis Moving From Both Departments' Accounts to Diagnosis to a Proposal That Ends on One Dated First Step

Student Name

Walden University

MLDR 6175: Managing, Mediating, and Resolving Conflict

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

The Lantern Hall Stage Calendar Dispute: A Final Conflict Analysis Moving From Both Departments' Accounts to Diagnosis to a Proposal That Ends on One Dated First Step

Executive Summary

Lantern Hall Theater Company's production and development departments clashed over the main stage in mid-October, when development had booked the annual donor gala and production had scheduled technical rehearsals for the season's largest musical. The analysis finds that the date was the least important part of the dispute. The damage came from a process conflict, the absence of anyone who owned the stage calendar, which combined with an avoid-then-dominate cycle between the two department heads and a habit of settling disputes by the managing director's ruling. The proposal is the working agreement the two heads signed on September 4, supported by a standing calendar meeting. The first step is a calendar session convened by the managing director with both heads and the company manager on Monday, January 11, before the next season's brochure goes to print.

Part One: The Case

On March 4 development promised the gala date to the credit union sponsoring the season, at a point when the stage was open that night and nobody had set the tech calendar. Production published the technical schedule on June 9, setting rehearsals for October 12 to 18. The production manager saw the overlap on June 10 and said nothing. The development director learned of it on July 21 and asked production to work around a three-hour event. Emails hardened over two weeks, and at the August 4 staff meeting each head made a remark about the other's department in front of the staff.

From development's side, the date had been booked properly, the $85,000 sponsorship depended on a main stage event and the board chair had personally invited the sponsor's president. From production's side, the technical week was when scenery, automation and actors came together for the first time, and any event requiring scenery to move added overtime and safety risk. Each account is accurate in its own terms. Pondy (1967) would place the dispute's roots in latent conditions that existed long before anyone disagreed, and the calendar with no owner was the most important of them.

Part Two: Analysis

Three lenses explain why a scheduling clash became a staff-meeting confrontation. First, positions and interests. The positions, gala on October 15 versus no outside events during tech week, were incompatible. The interests beneath them were not. Development needed the sponsor's renewal and the board chair's standing; production needed safe crew hours and control over a schedule it answered for. Both shared an interest in a strong opening and a predictable calendar (Fisher et al., 2011).

Second, the style cycle. Placed on the two dimensions in Rahim (1983), the production manager's behavior moved from avoiding in June and July to dominating in August, while the development director's booking and first email sat in a mild dominating position. Each style triggered the other: production's silence let development commit further, and development's commitments made production's late objection sharper. The cycle, not either person's character, turned a date problem into a relationship problem.

Third, interests, rights and power. Ury et al. (1988) distinguish resolving disputes by reconciling interests, by deciding who is right or by deciding who is more powerful. Lantern Hall had settled two earlier booking disputes by the managing director's ruling, a power method, and the current dispute was being argued as a question of rights: who booked first, and what past practice protected. Neither method addressed the missing calendar owner, so each ruling left the conditions for the next dispute in place.

Part Three: The Proposal and Its Limits

The proposal has two parts. The first is the working agreement signed on September 4. It defines the terms that caused the dispute, locks the main stage calendar each April, bars outside events during technical periods without both heads' written consent, allows two donor open rehearsals at a final dress or first preview, names the company manager as sole keeper of the calendar and sends any disagreement back to a meeting of the two heads before it reaches the managing director. The second is a standing calendar meeting each quarter, where the company manager reviews the next six months with both heads and flags any overlaps.

For October, the mediation produced a settlement the heads reached themselves at their second session: the gala moved to the final dress on October 21, with the sponsor's guests seeing a shortened performance of the musical and a backstage tour afterward. The sponsor's president accepted, and the board chair described it as a better event than the original.

The proposal has limits. It depends on the company manager having the time and standing to enforce the calendar, which the managing director has not yet confirmed in writing. It does nothing directly about the relationship between the two heads, which their private conversation after the mediation began to repair but did not finish. And it binds only production and development; the education and rentals departments also book the main stage and are not yet parties to the agreement. Brett et al. (1990) note that dispute systems work only when everyone who can create a dispute is inside them.

Part Four: The First Step

On Monday, January 11, the managing director will convene the production manager, the development director and the company manager for a two-hour calendar session. The session will enter next season's technical periods and planned outside events before the brochure goes to print on February 1, apply the April lock early for this one season and invite the education and rentals managers to join the agreement. The managing director owns the step; the company manager will prepare the merged calendar beforehand. If the session reveals an overlap, the agreement's loop-back clause will be tested for the first time, with the two heads meeting before anything reaches the managing director.

Aftermath

Pondy (1967) described the aftermath of a conflict episode as the set of conditions it leaves for the next one. This episode leaves a calendar owner, a written agreement and two department heads who have once talked about what they said to each other. Those are better conditions than the ones that existed in March. Whether they hold will be clear by the next April lock. If the loop-back clause is used and works, the episode will have changed how Lantern Hall handles conflict, not only how it handled this one.

References

Brett, J. M., Goldberg, S. B., & Ury, W. L. (1990). Designing systems for resolving disputes in organizations. American Psychologist, 45(2), 162-170. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.45.2.162

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

Pondy, L. R. (1967). Organizational conflict: Concepts and models. Administrative Science Quarterly, 12(2), 296-320. https://doi.org/10.2307/2391553

Rahim, M. A. (1983). A measure of styles of handling interpersonal conflict. Academy of Management Journal, 26(2), 368-376. https://doi.org/10.5465/255985

Ury, W. L., Brett, J. M., & Goldberg, S. B. (1988). Getting disputes resolved: Designing systems to cut the costs of conflict. Jossey-Bass.