[acb-hsp] Fw: The Movement of Conflict in Organizations: Triangulation

[J.Rayl]

Subject: The Movement of Conflict in Organizations: Triangulation


Hi.  This is long and I have no clue whether it will come through.  If anyone is interested, I can send it to you as an attachment.

The movement of conflict in
 organizations: the joint dynamics of splitting and triangulation.
by Kenwyn K. Smith
This paper examines the sociopsychological processes through which conflicts move
around
in
 organizations and become expressed at locations quite removed from their places
of origin. This conceptualization draws on two major theoretical contributions: (1)
"triangulation from social psychology and family therapy and (2) "splitting," as
developed
in
 anthropology and clinical psychology. With these sociopsychological processes linked,
it is possible to understand how conflicts are transported from one location to another.
These processes are illustrated with intensive case material from a long-term participant
observation study of a public school system
in
 which the relationships between the community, the elected board of education, the
superintendent's office, the principals, teachers, and students
in
 the high school were examined. A White House staff member of the Kennedy administration
once commented that it was always clear when the president and the First Lady were
fighting and when they were relating amicably. Responding to an expression of surprise
that their relationship would be so transparent, the staff member replied, "they
actually were quite private about their struggles, but we knew when they were fighting
simply by watching the interactions of their personal staffs. When the hairdressers
and the transport people were arguing we knew this was because JFK and Jackie were
in
 conflict. When these groups had their act together we knew the first couple was
getting on OK." This commentary contains a complex thesis about human behavior
in
 organizations: conflicts "belonging" at one location are often displaced and enacted
elsewhere, there being a parallelism between the conflicts at the place of origin
and the place of expression.
In
 this brief vignette from the Kennedy Administration we see the intergroup relations
at the lowest level of the White House having enfolded into them the unresolved interpersonal
conflicts at the highest level (Smith, 1984). The goal of this paper is to explicate
a set of sociopsychological processes through which movement of such conflict
in
 organizations may occur. Three preliminary considerations about the relocating of
conflict set the frame for the theorizing
in
 this paper. First, two settings may be connected
in
 such a way that conflicts can be passed from one to the other, making it possible
for all the tension to be released at one place on behalf of both parties. Or the
two settings may swap them around so that each expresses the conflicts "belonging"
to the other location. Second, conflicts can be moved from multiple locations, like
tributaries feeding into a river, and become joined together, producing pressures
that are released at a weak point, like the walls of a dam giving way or a river
breaking its banks. The point where the conflicts are released can be understood
as giving expression to all the tensions exported from elsewhere. Third, as conflict
moves, it can both jump levels of the system and change form.
In
 the Kennedy example, what started as interpersonal, marital tensions became an intergroup
struggle over whose scheduling priorities were to prevail, the beauticians' or the
limousine drivers'.
Setting the Frame
There have been many major theoretical contributions to understanding conflict within
organizations. Numerous writers have indicated that the very process of being human,
of living
in
 interdependent conditions, of organizing disparate units into one whole, creates
conflict and the attendant need to manage it (Boulding, 1957; Sarason, 1972; Wilden,
1972). Conflict within organizations can result from many forces, such as intrapersonal
struggles (Erikson, 1964; Lidz, 1968), interpersonal relationships (Walton, 1969;
Glidewell, 1970), group dynamics (Redl, 1942; Bion, 1961), status and authority (Kabanoff,
1985), or structural characteristics (Weber, 1947; Dahl, 1970; Oshry, 1977). While
conflict itself is neutral, it can be very disruptive or extremely enhancing depending
on how it is used (Walton, 1969; Wall and Nolan, 1986; Lynch, 1987). It can be dealt
with
in
 ways that produce very negative outcomes, ranging from the extremes of withdrawal
to attack (Mitchell and Mitchell, 1984). It can also be treated as a revitalizing
opportunity to change that which has become entrenched and stagnant (Stamatis, 1987).
The findings of many empirical studies of organizational conflict have led authors
to imply, though not state explicitly, that conflicts do get moved from one location
to another and expressed at the secondary setting
in
 some transposed form. At the group-dynamic level a good example is the often reported
phenomenon of scapegoating, an ancient religious ritual (Wells, 1980), which is now
used as a term to summarize the displacement of tensions that "belong" to the group
as a whole and their relocation
in
 one individual member who "takes on" the conflict and enacts it on behalf of all
group members (Slater, 1966; Yeargan and Nehemkis, 1983; Oehler and Perault, 1986).
At the intergroup level, there is substantial evidence about movement of conflict.
Alderfer and Smith's (1982) two studies of intergroup dynamics illustrate how the
conflicts among groups at the lower levels of an organization (between different
organizational divisions
in
 one study and between groups of black and white workers
in
 the other) can be understood as a parallel enactment of the intergroup relationships
of the larger context
in
 which they are embedded. Gemmill (1986) similarly reported that the group dynamics
observed during a medical case conference were a micro-cosmic portrayal of system
forces imported from the larger context of the medical profession as a whole. Friedkin
and Simpson (1985) found that unmanageable intermember relationships within groups
became more collaborative and less tension filled when there was conflict with other
groups. Similarly, the work of Coser (1956) and Sherif (1958) showed that relations
between groups
in
 conflict become much more congenial when the groups are confronted with a mutual
enemy or a superordinate goal. In
 fact, Simmel (1955) argued that groups in
 conflict often seek out, or create, enemies so that the tensions that exist
in
 their internal relationships can be exported into their interactions with the enemy.
Brown et al. (1986) reported an added dimension. Having an enemy can help a group
develop a sense of its own identity, yet again illustrating displacement, for under
these circumstances the tensions associated with identity formation are being played
out as a battle with an enemy. Conflict between an organization and its environment
is often reported as being accompanied by internal struggles, such as scapegoating
of leaders, blocked creativity, and lowered morale (Sarason, 1972; Cameron, Kim,
and Whetten, 1987). Thompson (1967) indicated that organizations facing external
threats attempt to protect internal units from disturbance. This is done by creating
regulatory mechanisms to absorb the external perturbations as much as possible and
to minimize their effects when total absorption is impossible (Ashby, 1956). This
sets
in
 place a new domain of conflict, between the pre-existing internal patterns and the
systems of regulation designed to protect the organization from the effects of external
disruptions (Dunbar and Wasilewski, 1985). From a more macro perspective, Carroll,
Goodstein, and Gyenes (1988) reported that conflict at the level of the state,
in this case, fragmentation in the decision-making process in
 Hungary over agricultural producer cooperatives, gets translated into an increase
in
 the level of conflict and competitiveness among the cooperatives at the more micro
level. Despite the many contributions theoreticians have made to understanding conflict,
the issue of how conflict moves remains unexplored. To date, we have developed only
the most rudimentary conceptual tools to investigate the processes by which conflict
moves, especially (1) when it surfaces at a location removed from its point of origin,
(2) when there are few or no visible signs of the tension where it began, and (3)
when there is no readily identifiable pathway by which the conflict was transported.
I am not claiming that conflict will always be displaced, for it clearly can be dealt
with at its local setting. This paper is not concerned with whether conflict moves,
or under what conditions. Rather, my purpose is to understand how it moves when it
does. The theoretical basis of this paper rests on two major processes and their
links: splitting and triangulation, two processes that are mutually sustaining. The
process of splitting creates the conditions that promote triangulation, and the process
of triangulation fosters splitting.
In this paper I examine the impact of these two processes operating in
 tandem and open up a new way to understand how conflict in
 organizations might move around. My claim is not that this is the only way to understand
the movement of conflict. My goal is simply to develop some fresh tools for our thinking
about this issue that, to date, has remained unexplicated. To illustrate, I discuss
a set of events that constituted one segment of an intensive study of Ashgrove's
public school system, the full report of which is recorded
in Smith (1982).
SPLITTING AND TRIANGULATION
Research Setting
Ashgrove (a pseudonym) was a small New England town of Protestant, Republican, farming
origins that had become a Catholic, Democratic, bedroom community for nearby, larger
industrial cities. Overall, the quality of education was very good. Ashgrove embraced
educational innovations regularly, willingly spending money on programs nearby school
systems shunned. The town politicians were careful financial custodians, underwriting
school improvements through industrial developments rather than increasing property
taxes. I was investigating the group relationships among the community, the town
politicians, the elected board of education, the superintendent's office, the school
principals, and the teachers and students
in the one high school in
 Ashgrove, using participant observation methods (as explicated
in
 Whyte, 1984; Miles and Huberman, 1984; Berg and Smith, 1988). My agreement with
the school system was (1) that I would be as unobtrusive as possible, (2) that I
would discuss none of my findings with anyone while gathering data, and (3) that
at the conclusion I would provide oral feedback based on my
research
 to all who had participated. I report some of my findings here, for purely illustrative
purposes. While the whole study lasted six months, the material presented here was
gathered during the first three months. During my field work
in
 Ashgrove I spent about 25 hours a week for the first three months and six hours
a week for the last three months, for a total of approximately 400 hours of direct
data gathering, about 100 on each of the following activities: (1) archival
research
, (2) individual interviewing, (3) observing group meetings, and (4) watching direct
encounters between groups. During the first three months, I interviewed the following
16 people twice and some of them three times: all nine board members, the superintendent
and his two assistants, and the principal and his three assistant principals
in
 the high school. I also interviewed 10 teachers and approximately 50 students once.
I observed all the groups working
in
 their natural settings. This included, for example, 40 hours of silently observing
the board of education conducting its public and secret board meetings or the Democratic
board members during their late-night, clandestine caucuses. I observed groups interacting
with each other, such as when the board of education met with the town finance committee,
both
in
 public and secret settings, and the weekly encounters between the board and the
teachers' contract negotiation team, both during their direct negotiations and when
they met to caucus privately. There were several principles I adopted while gathering
data: (1) I would vary the source of my data as frequently as possible. For example,
if I interviewed the superintendent or one of his assistants one day, I would make
sure that before I spoke to anyone from the superintendent's office again, usually
two or three weeks later, I interviewed and observed members of other groups, such
as teachers or the board. (2) I varied, on a regular basis, the forms of my data
gathering. For example, I would follow my observations of group or intergroup events
by a series of interviews or intensive archival searches to see whether claims made
during meetings could be confirmed by other sources. (3) I treated only the information
that I got from three independent sources as data worth considering. (4) Whenever
I came to feel one group's "reality" was "right" and another's was "wrong," I would
then go and observe the second group and stay there until its experience seemed as
palatable as the perspectives of the first group. (5) I sought information about
Ashgrove's history and its politics, but always so that I could give context to my
main focus, which steadfastly remained understanding the relationships among the
groups within the school system.
In this paper I describe a set of complex organizational processes, observed in
 the Ashgrove school system that illustrate the real-life, human interactions that
can be meaningfully understood via the joint dynamics of "triangulation" and "splitting."
While this case material includes the relationships with the school system's community,
it is the organizational conflict that is of primary concern to me.
Triangulation and the Movement of Conflict
Bowen (1978) argued that it is often most useful to conceptualize relationships between
two parties, be they individuals, groups or organizations,
in
 triangular rather than diadic terms. He based this on the observation that whenever
tension emerges
in
 the relationship between two parties (X and Y), there is a tendency for one of them
(say X) to draw a third party (A) into the encounter, forming a triangle with one
insider pair (X-A) and isolating Y from the original bond with X. The pairing strengthens
X but puts Y into a comparatively powerless position, destabilizing the original
X-Y relationship. Y may retaliate by trying to break the X-A bond, either to reconnect
with X or alternatively to link up with A, isolating X
in
 a kind of "payback" for abandoning Y
in
 the first place. Y's actions are likely to provoke a counteraction from X, triggering
a protracted cyclical struggle that results
in
 A being made into a pawn of X-Y's interactions. This is referred to as primary triangulation.
Another option for Y,
in
 the face of the triangle created by X's bonding with A, is to pull
in
 another outside party (B) and build a (Y-B) coalition as a counter to X-A's power.
This may be described as secondary triangulation. When such coalitions are built,
there are certain rules of interaction that are commonly observed. These were explicated
by the balance theorists (Cartwright and Harary, 1956; Heider, 1958), who asserted
that the set of relationships among all pairs
in
 a triad moves toward a state of internal congruence. For example, "the enemy of
my friend becomes my enemy," and "the enemy of my enemy becomes my friend." There
are two forms of balance or congruence, as represented
in
 Figures 1, a and b, below: (1) when all pairs of relationships are allies or (2)
when two parties are allied and both are adversaries of the third party. There are
also two forms of imbalance or incongruence, as represented
in
 Figure 1, c and d, below: (3) when two pairs are allies, but the third association
is adversarial or (4) when all parties are adversaries.
In
 the case of secondary triangulation, if Y reacts to X's bonding with A by pulling
in a second external party (B), and does this in
 a way that keeps all interlocked triangles congruent
in
 the sense meant by the balance theorists, the result will be conflict between two
pairs (X-A and Y-B)
in
 place of the original X and Y struggle. If the X-A and Y-B pairs then deal with
the strains
in their interactions by drawing in
 further allies, each time following the rules of congruence, no matter how many
extra parties are included (with only one exception referred to as the case of scapegoating),
the result will be two, and only two, opposing groups (Hoffman, 1981). Hence, the
most common consequence of repeated secondary triangulation is that what started
as a conflict between X and Y becomes quickly transformed into a conflict between
two opposing coalitions, as
in
 my opening illustration of President and Mrs. Kennedy. This basic process is referred
to as triangulation into opposing coalitions. To illustrate how the processes of
triangulation can get played out, consider the case
in which there are three pairs of affirmative relationships in
 a particular setting (X-Y, A-B, and C-D). If conflict emerges between X and Y, and
X responds by drawing A into an X-A pairing, thereby fracturing A's previous bond
with B (as represented
in
 Figure 2, b), the question is what happens to B? If B, now isolated from A, responds
by pulling D,
in
 turn, from an affirmative relationship with C, the overall effect will be the impairment
of the C-D relationship (as represented
in
 Figure 2, c). Assuming all these parties then interact with each other and the rules
of triangular congruence are maintained, a very typical pattern will be that represented
in
 Figure 2, d, a replica of the two-coalition pattern discussed previously. Whatever
way it plays out, the central issue is that pathways get established by which the
conflict can be displaced. Another option for Y, confronted with X's pairing with
A is to break up the X-A coalition
in
 such a destructive way that afterwards no connecting of X, Y, or A is possible,
resulting
in
 an incongruent triangle. It would be natural for X, Y, and A then to split apart
and simply terminate their relationships. However, this is often not possible, as
in
 family situations
in which members feel emotionally locked in or with groups in
 organizations that simply are not free to cease interacting. One way to deal with
this is for each party (X, Y, and A) to pull
in
 external allies. If this is repeated over and over, each time obeying the rules
of congruence, the consequence will be the creation of three adversarial coalitions,
each forming around X, Y, and A. This pattern is often seen with families engaged
in
 domestic violence, where the local police, the school system, and the community
welfare agency are respectively drawn
in
 on behalf of the abused member, the acting-out child, and the spouse contending
with the family finances (Bowen, 1978). These three agencies then end up
in
 a struggle with each other that parallels that of the individual family members.
The results are twofold. Either the agencies become so combative with each other
that another system such as the judiciary has to be brought
in
 so that the family's problems do not get buried beneath the institutional battles
of these "helping" agencies, or a new form of triangulation develops among these
agencies, replicating the patterns discussed earlier.
Splitting and Its Relationship to Triangulation
The concept of splitting, defined by Laing (1969) as the partitioning of a set into
two subsets, emerged
in parallel forms in
 both the clinical (Klein, 1975) and anthropological (Bateson, 1936) literatures.
In
 the clinical tradition, splitting describes the actions of infants struggling to
deal with early ambivalences such as the desire to be fused with mother and the wish
to be separated from her. Such ambivalences create strong love/hate reactions toward
the mother which then have to be managed. To maintain a sense of psychological equilibrium,
the infant splits the feelings of good and bad, feelings that emanate from a common
source, and projects them into different "objects," for example, creating a "good
mommy" and a "bad daddy" (Klein, 1975; Wells, 1980), thereby enabling these "apparently
contradictory" feelings to be experienced as having come from different places (Smith
and Berg, 1987). The management of this splitting leads directly to the generation
of a triangle with the three prongs being (1) self, with deeply ambivalent feelings,
(2) an external person (object) who is made into the repository of the "good" projections,
and (3) another person who becomes the repository of the "bad," enabling the self
to be experienced as whole. Bateson (1936) conceptualized a social version of splitting
while observing tribal rituals. He noted that the whole often became partitioned
into two units
in
 such a way that one part "took on" certain attributes on behalf of the whole, while
others adopted different traits, again on behalf of the whole. For example, during
tribal rituals some members became dancers while others became observers, and the
actions of each part heightened the differentiation of the other. The audience behavior
reinforced the dancers' exhibitionism which, conversely, induced the observers into
more passionate levels of spectatorship, and vice versa (Lipset, 1980). Bateson saw
splitting as a process of oscillation and vibration that intensifies role differentiation.
It emerges
in
 either of two forms, complementary or symmetrical. With complementary splitting,
the parts take on different roles that together make up a whole, such as leader-followers,
master-apprentices, or exhibitionists-spectators. With symmetrical splitting, the
whole is partitioned
in
 such a way that each part competes for the same or similar roles. Once role delineation
has begun, if both parties fully engage, the process intensifies. For example, with
complementary exchanges, as the submissive becomes more passive, the dominant becomes
more assertive, and vice versa.
In
 symmetrical exchanges, cycles of escalation are set off, such as price wars
in economics and armament races in
 international relations (Hoffman, 1981). Bateson noted that symmetrical struggles
often occur within the same level of a system, while tensions between levels usually
take on a complementary form. He also observed that symmetrical interactions within
one level of a system can be swapped with complementary ones across levels, and vice
versa. He illustrated this with his observations of tribal initiation rites. Bateson
suggested that during such rituals the relationship between the men as a whole and
the initiates could be viewed as complementary
in
 that, as part of the rites of passage, the boys have to submit to the dominance
of the adult males. However, when the adult males were divided into two rival factions,
each struggling to be the most influential
in
 the tribe (a symmetrical split), the novices would be bullied more ferociously than
usual. It occurred as follows: When the men were expected to act
in
 a unified way during these initiation rituals, the rival factions would place their
direct conflicts with each other on hold and engage the other faction indirectly
via the initiates. Each faction would be extra abusive to the boys and then taunt
its rival into bullying the initiates even further.
In
 the process, a triangle would be created, the three prongs being the boys and the
two rival factions of men. The symmetrical conflicts among the dominant males can
be understood as being displaced into the complementary relationships across levels
of the system. Using these concepts, Bateson (1972) provided a number of observations
about how a system stabilizes itself as conflict escalates. With the intensification
of internal symmetrical struggles, a portion of the rival factions often splits off
to "colonize" elsewhere, resulting
in
 a new organization or a satellite village that ends up being a "carbon copy" of
the original. The symmetrical divisions within it turn out to be similar to those
at the first location; however, the conflicts
in
 both settings are more subdued. Another version of this displacement
in
 the face of symmetrical splitting is what has become known as heresy. Here one faction
is labelled as threatening to the established order and is expelled. It colonizes
elsewhere, with its new setting embodying that which was not tolerable to the earlier
community. But the old community seems reluctant to let go and instead tries to control
the satellite, creating a complementary struggle. The resultant across-level complementary
conflict can be seen as an expression of the earlier within-system symmetrical tensions.
Movement of Conflict in Full Bloom
The central thesis of this paper is that conflict from one setting is often "dealt
with" by being passed to another location, with the form of the tensions being altered
as they are shifted across levels of the system. The key question associated with
this is how might we understand the sociopsychological processes by which such conflicts
are transported. To address this, I use the Ashgrove story to illustrate how splitting
and triangulation, operating
in tandem, make possible the movement of organizational conflict. I discuss splitting
in
 a generic way, drawing upon Bateson's ideas, but for my purposes I discuss these
in
 terms of within-unit splits, which Bateson labelled symmetrical and which I call
horizontal, and between-level splits, which Bateson called complementary and I call
vertical.
In organizations
in
 which there are hierarchies, vertical tensions are of the complementary form. There
are three major points illustrated by the Ashgrove case: (1) The splittings and triangulations
from separate settings often spill over into each other, creating pathways that consistently
channel the tensions into particular places; (2) This channeling may be repeated
so often that the actual conflicts appear to be and are treated as an attribute of
that part of the system giving expression to it; and (3) The linking of triangles
such that the horizontal splits at one level of analysis become dovetailed into vertical
splits with those above and below, and vice versa, create an interlocking grid where
attempts to break out of the prevailing dynamic trigger a lot of movement within
the grid but little change
in
 the grid itself. For almost five years, one very stressful theme had dominated the
attention of Ashgrove's board of education: where to locate the ninth grade students.
They were building a new middle school to replace the dilapidated junior high and
to relieve overcrowding at the senior high school and several elementary schools.
There were good educational reasons to keep the ninth grade students
in
 the high school and good fiscal reasons to move them to the middle school. When
it came to its school system, the Ashgrove community as a whole had two strong values,
a progressive educational philosophy and a conservative approach to town finances.
Most community members expressed both these values. Virtually everyone voiced his
or her support for educational innovations and yet voiced concerns about wasting
money on changes that promised little of worth. There was an almost universal willingness
to spend money on anything that would clearly contribute to the children's development.
However, when these two values, which seemed to exist side by side within most individuals,
were expressed publicly
in
 the community, they were embodied in the actions of two camps, the "educational
progressives" and the "fiscal conservatives." The debate over where the ninth grade
should be located pulled powerfully on the strings of both these community camps,
who of course pressured the board members to represent their interests. On numerous
occasions the board had tried to decide what to do with the ninth grade, but each
time they had ended up with a deadlocked 4-4 vote. When such deadlocks arose, the
chairman was expected to cast a tie-breaking vote. This created two problems, one
for the board and one for the chairman. From the board's point of view, breaking
the deadlock meant it had sided with one of the community camps, risking a backlash
from the other. The chairman's concern was that as a prominent lawyer in Ashgrove,
whichever way he voted risked alienating a substantial portion of his legal clients.
The chairman tried to orchestrate not having to vote, so he could avoid having his
legal practice turned into a forum for the enactment of the community's conflicting
values. One method he used was to invite further community input, which repetitively
got played out as follows. Representatives of the two community camps would attend
the board meeting, and each would pick on the subgroup within the board most like
the part of the community it opposed. The fiscal conservatives from the community
would attack the board members who had voted for the educational innovation, to the
accompaniment of the public sympathy and private delight of the board progressives,
and vice versa. Board members seemed to revel in these "community input" sessions,
for, during them, each faction within the board would have its opponents attacked
without bloodying its own hands. The board subgroups might have waged this battle
directly with each other, were it possible to do so without creating a civil war
within its own ranks. But this "external" arrangement was "ideal," for it set up
the kind of triangle that enabled the adversarial factions within the board, after
the community attacks, to act like good colleagues by mutually agreeing about the
brutality of the community members and thereby helping to heal each others' wounds.
In their shared reaction to the volatility of the public, board members reported
feeling united, of course overlooking the fact that just prior to this event they
had been deadlocked with equally hostile divisions in their own group and that they
had sought this "special community input" as a means of dealing with their own internal
divisions. After these community "input" sessions, the board was of course still
split with 4-4 deadlocks, but by then emotions would have been stirred to such a
level that diffusing the incubating tensions became the highest priority. Sometimes
this would be done by the chairman simply voting and getting it all over with. But
often the board would seek some respite by asking the superintendent or the high
school principal to stand in the firing line of the community factions' hostilities
for a while. On one of these occasions, in a public setting, while being subjected
to intense personal and professional abuse by the warring community factions, the
principal, aged 48, suffered a massive heart attack and died. At this point, the
tensions that had been cascading down from the community to the board to the principal
were returned to the board in an even more complex form. The board was left confronting
not only the problem of where to locate the ninth grade but also the need to find
a new principal. There were two assistant principals in the high school at that time,
Brendan Collier and Lewis Brook. Collier, the senior assistant, indicated that he
didn't want the job under any circumstances. So Lewis Brook was appointed acting
principal and the board returned, undaunted, to its ongoing struggle over the ninth
grade location, virtually ignoring the battle casualties being strewn by the wayside.
For several weeks Lewis Brook heard nothing from the board, no indication as to how
long he would be acting principal, no indication about procedures for making a permanent
appointment, no concern that he and Collier were now doing the work that had long
outgrown the capacities of three people. The board was simply ignoring the principals'
situation while it attended to other concerns. Then, without warning, Brook's position
was made permanent. No national search. No interviews. No discussion. The job was
his. Brook experienced the board as behaving erratically. He asked them to make a
quick appointment of a new assistant principal, a request that was ignored. Weeks
went by, and then three board members made a bold move, arguing that they should
appoint two new assistant principals, not just one. Their reasoning was that running
the high school had become too burdensome for one principal and two assistants, as
the recent death of their principal had clearly indicated. Several board members
rallied in opposition, arguing such an action would be fiscally reckless. Debate
raged again, and another 4-4 deadlock seemed likely. Again there was a horizontal
split within the board, and the approach of the factions toward the high school principals
can be fruitfully examined in terms of triangulation. The principals were being made
into a third leg of a triangle that could be constructed in either of two ways, the
key question being which subgroup, the board conservatives (BC) or the board progressives
(BP), would get its way with the principals (PP) by being affirmatively paired with
them, i.e., versions a or b of Figure 3. From previous events, it was clear what
would happen. The progressives would attempt to bond with the principals by suggesting
that a third assistant would ease the excessive administrative demands in the high
school. The conservatives would counter, suggesting that saving funds by not appointing
an extra assistant principal would enable those special innovations, dear to the
hearts of the principals, to be protected from the budgetary axe. This set the stage
for the struggle over which of the triangles (a or b in Figure 3) was to prevail,
thereby making these triangles linked (as in Figure 3, c), so that the affirmative
bond between Principal Lewis Brook (P1) and his assistant, Brendan Collier (P2),
would be placed under severe threat. Should the pattern represented in Figure 3,
c be maintained, there would be two congruent triangles (BC-P1-BP and BC-P2-BP) and
two incongruent triangles (BC-P1-P2 and BP-P1-P2) that would have to co-exist. But
all triangular incongruence would disappear if the two principals were to become
horizontally split, as represented in Figure 3, d. Typically this would mean one
principal taking on the concerns about protecting their hard-earned innovations and
not risking them by asking for another assistant, with the other principal arguing
that the innovations would not be worth continuing unless they could be adequately
administered, an impossibility without an extra principalship. Of course, the bond
between the principals (PP) would have to be extraordinarily strong to resist the
pressures coming from the board, especially given that the principals were subordinate
to the board. On the other hand, by PP's splitting, both triangles a and b in Figure
3 could prevail, and the principals' relationship with each other would become horizontally
split, with each being affirmatively linked to one board faction and locked into
a vertical split (due to the superior-subordinate relationship) with the other board
faction. The board chairman was determined to avoid getting in the middle of this
4-4 split. He privately indicated to board members that if the motion for the extra
principal did deadlock at 4-4, he would vote against it, and he successfully used
this threat as leverage to orchestrate the defeat of the extra assistant principal
motion without it ever coming to a public vote. A committee of the superintendent,
the assistant superintendent, and Principal Lewis Brook was appointed to select one
new assistant principal from the current ranks of Ashgrove's high school teachers.
They were asked to screen all applicants and present to the board, in rank order,
the names of three people they deemed appropriate for the job. The selection committee
set to its task. Four current teachers were singled out and rank-ordered, with Peter
Maher being labelled the number one candidate and Bob Walder number four. While this
was supposedly "confidential" information, members of the community quickly heard
it, and it became entangled in the ongoing clashes between the fiscal conservative
and educational progressive camps in the community. One camp wanted Bob Walder, for,
in their words, he was "a strong disciplinarian, liked and respected by both teachers
and students." The other camp wanted Peter Maher, a man with strong ties to the town's
political underground streams and viewed as someone who could "break through administrative
hurdles" and "get things done," as his supporters phrased it. No one seemed to care
about the candidates ranked two and three. Influential members of both community
camps began to barrage the selection committee with phone calls. Some lobbied for
Walder, while others supported Maher. As shown in Figure 4, relationships were being
aligned in ways that can be represented by triangles, as in Figure 3, only now the
key adversaries were the community conservatives (CC) and the community progressives
(CP), with the superintendent's selection committee (SS) being made the third leg
(triangle a). The community camps were again involved in a horizontal split, and
each camp was trying to get the selection committee into a submissive role, thereby
setting up a vertical conflict between levels of the system. The selection committee
held firm and refused to buckle under this political pressure. This provoked the
community factions to circumvent it and directly pressure the board of education,
which had ultimate appointing power of all assistant principals. Three board members
were quickly corralled into supporting Walder, while three others declared they would
vote for Maher. That left two swing votes and the chairman. Sure enough, one went
for Walder, the other for Maher, creating the inevitable deadlock, as represented
in Figure 4, b (similar to Figure 3, d). Combining, then, the forces represented
in a and b, the situation represented in Figure 4, c was as follows. The community
and board conservatives were in coalition, as were the community and board progressives.
This meant that the triangle between the community camps and the superintendent's
selection committee continued to be incongruent. If the board factions supported
the selection committee, this would make for incongruent triangular relationships
between the board and the community factions. However, if they adopted a relationship-negating
posture toward the selection committee, as in Figure 4, d, the triangles associated
with board and community relationships would be congruent. Yet another 4-4 deadlock
appeared inevitable. The chairman again looked for a way out, but he needed time
to orchestrate it, so he encouraged the board to postpone the decision. It so happened
that those board members supporting Walder had been the ones who had voted against
the original proposal to create a third assistant principalship. It suddenly dawned
on them that had they supported the third assistant principalship proposal earlier,
they would now have a perfect solution. Both Walder and Maher could be appointed.
The problem with this idea was that they had rejected it originally on the grounds
of fiscal irresponsibility. Since they were aligned to the community's fiscal conservative
camp, to reverse this now would be politically very costly. But it still seemed worth
a try, so they made their move. Predictably, those who had initially favored the
creation of the third principalship, and who were the same people now supporting
Maher and aligned with the educational progressive camp, felt insulted by the blatant
politics of this maneuver and vowed to vote against it. Equally predictably, the
probability of another 4-4 deadlock was very high. However, the chairman was determined
to orchestrate a back-room decision, which he eventually did, leading, after several
weeks, to the creation of the third assistant principalship. The way was then clear
for the appointments of both Peter Maher and Bob Walder to be made, except for one
further obstacle. By law, the board could only ratify someone the superintendent
nominated. When they called for his nominations, the superintendent indicated he
would recommend Maher, who had been candidate number one, and the number-two candiate.
This was not Bob Walder, who had been ranked fourth. The board members for Walder
were outraged. Board members had gone through all this political pain to creat a
solution, and the superintendent seemed ready to thwart their efforts. No one had
been paying attention to the fact that the pressures on the selection committee that
emanated from the triangular dynamics created thus far (as in Figure 4) had reinforced
that committee's sense of unanimity. The board moved quickly. Those for Bob Walder
made it clear that they would not be blocked on this. They did it by dividing the
selection committee. The move was baldly political and quite blatant. The superintendent
could nominate Maher and whomever else he chose, but the board would keep rejecting
his second candidate until Walder's name was presented. If he refused ever to present
Walder's name, he could expect to have his contract terminated at renewal time. They
also made it clear that if this happened, the assistant superintendent, who was serving
on this selection committee, would be promoted to the superintendency. Using the
old administrative trick of splitting the subordinates created the pattern of Figure
4, e, which is the triangulation into two coalitions discussed earlier and represented
in Figure 2, d. Now all triangles were congruent, with intense horizontal splits
within each level (in the community, within the board, and in the superintendent's
office), two strong coalitions, and many vertical splits across levels of the hierarchy.
There were a few more weeks of battles before this was all settled, but eventually
the superintendent capitulated and both Maher and Walder were appointed. The importance
of the processes described above can be underscored by how the principals at Ashgrove
high school operated in the wake of these events. Three years after the joint appointments
of Maher and Walder, the most dominant observation made by virtually everyone was
"the principal group is a group divided against itself." Two factions were visible
to all, one consisting of Principal Lewis Brook and Assistant Principal Peter Maher,
the other being made up of assistant principals Bob Walder and Brendan Collier, who
were seen as bonding to cope with the intense Brook-Maher alliance. The clearest
evidence cited for this split was that after this group of four principals made a
collective decision, it always appeared that two contradictory conclusions had been
reached, for Brook and Maher would implement it one way, while Walder and Collier
did the opposite. In their internal relationships there was also a clear split between
Maher and Walder. Peter Maher reported, "I feel buried in administrative duties,
which is necessary to compensate for Bob Walder who simply refuses to do his share
of the administrative tasks." On the other hand, Walder spent all his energy attending
to the concerns of students and teachers, as he reported, "to balance Peter Maher's
total preoccupation with administration." Principal Brook saw Maher as heroically
compensating for Walder's shortcomings, while Collier argued Walder was the one correcting
for Maher's weaknesses. Numerous attempts had been made to negotiate a more balanced
relationship between Maher and Walder, but they constantly returned to this same
position, as if pulled by a gravitational force. These internal group relationships
were embedded in a context that had superiors and subordinates also intensely split.
Those above, the board of education and the superintendent's office, viewed the problem
of the principal group as resulting from what they described as "Maher's excellence"
and "Walder's incompetence." However, those subordinate to the principal group, the
teachers and the students, held the opposite perspective, describing Maher as "filling
his and others' lives with administrative trivia," while Walder was seen as "deeply
committed to education, balancing the concerns of teachers and students in an understanding
and effective way." The question is how did this situation emerge? If we go back
to the appointment process and add one further layer on what happened in terms of
splitting and triangulation, it becomes possible to see the evolution of these above
observations. When Principal Lewis Brook had asked the board to make a quick appointment
of a new assistant principal and when the board had ignored his request, Brook looked
around the school to see whom he could appoint on a temporary basis. Bob Walder,
senior English teacher and baseball coach had a light workload. Putting him into
this role on a temporary basis made sense at that time. However, when the superintendent's
selection committee ranked the candidates, Peter Maher was first and Bob Walder fourth.
Lewis Brook was on this committee, and he concurred with this ranking of Walder.
Hence, he was invested in resisting the community's and the board's attempts to get
Walder appointed. Brook, however, was in the awkward position of having given Walder
the acting appointment initially. Others started dismissing Brook's opinion, insinuating
that he must have made a mistake in choosing Walder in the first place, so why should
anyone believe he was being any more competent in now arguing for Maher? Brook countered
by discussing what a disappointment Walder had proved to be. He bolstered Maher's
case by diminishing Walder, claiming he had been a poor acting assistant principal.
The dilemma was that others had experienced Walder as having done well. Brook endlessly
sang Maher's praises and argued against Walder. Those above him heard only what he
wanted them to hear, and those below, the teachers and students, thought Brook was
silly to denigrate Walder, for they had direct experience of how skilled Walder really
was. So even in these early days, before the assistant principalship situation was
"resolved," the seeding of the split opinion about these two men had occurred.
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION The Ashgrove case illustrates three dominant patterns of
how conflicts move in organizations. Each pattern is characterized by a dynamic that
can be described in terms of the joint operation of splitting and triangulation.
First, each of the key groups in Ashgrove developed intense splits within its ranks.
Once these splittings had occurred (for example, the two factions in the board of
education or the two subgroups of principals), they engaged in endless struggles
over which side was to dominate. Yet no party was ever able to gain the upper hand,
leaving these units caught in a cycle of horizontal splits. In Ashgrove, all groups
seemed unable to contain their own conflicts. As a result, the horizontal tensions
within units were moved into the relationships between levels of the organization,
either creating new vertical conflicts or joining with and augmenting established
ones. This can be described through the following dynamic: Dynamic 1: >From horizontal
to vertical splits via triangulation. When an organizational unit becomes partitioned,
horizontal tensions are created. If these are not resolved within the unit, and one
faction, in an attempt to move the unit, brings in a third party from either above
or below in the hierarchy, a triangle of the kind discussed in this paper becomes
created. Then what started as a horizontal conflict internal to the unit will become
part of, or create, a vertical struggle between parties not originally involved.
Second, in the hierarchy of the school system, certain groups answered to others.
Conflict often existed between levels as a result of the different functions the
respective parties carried (for example, the board had a role in ensuring budgetary
realism, while the principals were responsible for encouraging educational innovations).
In Ashgrove, vertical conflicts between levels of the system often moved into the
established horizontal tensions at one of those levels. Sometimes new horizontal
conflicts appeared to be created simply as a way of dealing with what seemed like
unresolvable vertical tensions. One additional problem was what happened with vertical
tensions when there were horizontal conflicts in the ranks of those with authority.
Which part of the authority was the subordinate group to bow to, since responsible
followership is ambigious when the leadership is split? In Ashgrove there were extreme
horizontal splits within authority groups, which heightened the degree of triangulation,
setting the stage for the vertical tensions between levels to spill over constantly
into the horizontal tensions within levels. These movements of conflict can be described
by the following dynamic: Dynamic 2: From vertical to horizontal splits via triangulation.
When an organization has vertical conflicts between levels of its hierarchy, interdependencies
necessary to the organization come under threat. If these conflicts are dealt with
by triangulation, instead of revising, restoring, or recreating interdependencies
that are mutually acceptable, then the vertical tensions get moved into alternate
locations, either augmenting established horizontal splits or creating new ones.
The third pattern emerges as a consequence of the first two operating together. The
process that switched horizontal tensions into vertical ones created a pathway by
which the conflicts within the community became manifest as horizontal splits within
the board of education, and so on, down the line, until they ended up being enacted
within the ranks of the high school principals. In each case, the horizontal tensions
at one level were grafted onto the vertical conflicts between two levels and then
back into the horizontal form at the adjacent level. This pattern was often repeated
across many levels of the system, and it could go up or down the tiers of the hierarchy.
Likewise, the vertical conflicts that existed between the groups at juxtaposed levels
(for example, the community and the board), were switched into the horizontal splits
at the neighboring level (within the board of education) and then converted back
into the vertical form and passed into the relationship with the next level (the
superintendent's office), and so on. So, ultimately, the vertical tensions between
the principals and the superintendent's office, for example, contained many of those
vertical struggles that rightfully belonged to the relationship between the community
and the board. These more complex movements are described by the following dynamic:
Dynamic 3: Swapping horizontal and vertical splits and having each encased in the
other. Combining dynamics 1 and 2, above, a unit having no internal tension can be
provoked into horizontal conflicts by the triangulations of a superior or subordinate
party with which it is vertically struggling. Similarly, nonconflictual relationships
between units in a hierarchy can be induced into vertical splits by the triangulations
of a unit embroiled in horizontal conflicts. Hence, unresolved horizontal splits
can be transformed into vertical tensions that become horizontal conflicts at the
next level up or down the system. Unresolved vertical conflicts can trigger horizontal
splits at another level, which actors deal with by further catalyzing a vertical
conflict at the next level. These patterns can be repeated until there is no further
unit to which to pass the conflicts. Then the conflicts will either (1) be enacted
by that last unit on behalf of all the others or (2) be passed back via the established
triangular pathways in the search for some other unit to provide an outlet for their
expression. This can leave horizontal tensions within units encased in vertical conflicts
with parties above and below them and vertical tensions between units encased in
horizontal conflicts with the parties with whom they interact. Since conflict tends
to move around in organizations in ways that are not readily noticeable, it is easy
to overlook the fact that where the conflict becomes manifest may be quite removed
from where it originates. Our dilemma is that if we are not looking for the possibility
of this displacement we are unlikely to see it. Hence, we all need alternative ways
of looking and alternative ways of understanding what we think we see. In conclusion,
I suggest that all organizational members think carefully when the units they belong
to become split or when interdependent relationships with other units become polarized.
When a horizontal conflict surfaces, there is a distinct possibility that it is being
fueled by an unrecognized vertical conflict. And when a vertical conflict emerges
it may well be the result of a hidden horizontal conflict that is being displaced.
This is of special importance to managers because of the inordinate energy they devote
both to keeping conflicts contained and to resolving them when they arise. However,
the exclusive focus on the point of manifestation means that the forces creating
and fueling the conflicts remain unaddressed. Hence "solutions" end up being partial
and temporary, and the conflicts get driven underground, to incubate and surface
again at some other time, in some other form. In addition, the very attention invested
in dealing with conflict at the location where it has become manifest may distract
managers from recognizing the conflict's etiology and the pathways by which it moves.
Managers are also prone to develop strategies that unwittingly seed the very conflicts
that render the strategies impossible to implement. A strategy that seems ideal during
planning can fail because it creates new conflicts the organization knows nothing
about managing, setting up the probability that the conflicts will be pushed underground
or seen as being caused by some dynamic other than the strategy. Organizational strategists
need to plan with an appreciation of the conflicts their strategies will create and
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-1-
Questia, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning. www.questia.com
Publication Information:
Article Title: The Movement of Conflict in Organizations: The Joint Dynamics of Splitting
and Triangulation. Contributors: Kenwyn K. Smith - author. Journal Title: Administrative
Science Quarterly. Volume: 34. Issue: 1. Publication Year: 1989. Page Number: 1+.
COPYRIGHT 1989 Cornell University, Johnson Graduate School; COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group
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