Mediation TheoryAuthor(s): Deborah M. KolbSource: Public Administration Review, Vol. 46, No. 6 (Nov. - Dec., 1986), pp. 683-684Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Society for Public AdministrationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/976242 .

Accessed: 16/06/2014 09:22

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

Wiley and American Society for Public Administration are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve andextend access to Public Administration Review.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 188.72.126.41 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 09:22:12 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

CORRESPONDENCE 683

As I have argued before, I do not believe that my experiences, given the situation at the time, should be seen as surprising. Members of the administration must be loyal to the President and his policies. They must advocate his proposed policies as being effective in pro- ducing the intended results. The party out of power, on the other hand, if they are resisting policy proposals, properly highlight what they see as the negative out- comes of policy proposals. Therefore, politicians are not the appropriate people to be setting assumptions for the financial analysis of a social insurance program such as Social Security.

Have the political pressures influenced the prepara- tion of the actuarial projections to the point of damag- ing their credibility? I believe that has not been the case. The problems with the actuarial projections have to do much more with the difficulty in setting assumptions with a high degree of reliability. Mr. Light seems to accuse the actuaries of using methodology which creates an appearance of reliability of the projections which, in fact, does not exist. I find that comment strange since the Trustees' Reports do contain projections under widely varying optimistic, intermediate, and pessimistic assumptions. Mr. Light seems to ignore that and fur- thermore fails to suggest any better way of communicat- ing the uncertainty of the projections. One almost gets the feeling that Mr. Light concludes that we would be better off without the projections at all than with pro- jections of an uncertain nature. Few would agree with him on that score.

Mr. Light also gratuitously states that actuaries do not have training in making economic forecasts. If the reliability of forecasts made by economists in the 1979 to 1981 period are any indication, certainly the same could be said of them. More importantly, actuaries cer- tainly do have training in illustrating the effects of economic assumptions on financial security programs. Furthermore no professionally responsible actuary would set such assumptions without appropriate con- sultation with those with appropriate professional qualifications.

Over its 50-year history, the Social Security Admin- istration has been blessed with a series of Chief Actuaries who brought to the job a demonstrable degree of independence, integrity, and competence, the tone for which was set by Mr. Myers in his 24 years in that position. Mr. Myers' three immediate successors had the advantage of having achieved success and maturity in their profession in the private sector and who took the job out of a commitment to public service. The pres- ent Chief Actuary, Harry Ballantyne, while a career civil servant, has nevertheless maintained the traditional values of the office. One might even say that is the single most important function of the Chief Actuary, along with the responsibility for the interpretation of the sig- nificance of the projections to the various interested publics. At least in my own case, I felt there was little I could add to the very competent technical work of the staff of the Office of the Actuary, so I focused on the former activities.

NO)VEMBER/DECEMBER 1986

However, in my opinion there remains a danger that in appearance, if not in reality, future projections will be prepared with a bias resulting from political pressure. The one significant long-term accomplishment, for which I take at least partial credit while I was Chief Actuary, was the establishment of a practice of includ- ing in the Trustees' Reports a statement of actuarial opinion which reads as follows: "It is my opinion that (1) the techniques and methodology used herein to eval- uate the financial and actuarial status of the Federal Old-Age and Survivors Insurance and Disability Insur- ance Trust Funds are generally accepted within the actuarial profession; and (2) the assumptions used and the resulting actuarial estimates are, in the aggregate, reasonable for the purpose of evaluating the financial and actuarial status of the trust funds, taking into con- sideration the experience and expectations of the pro- gram," followed by the signature of the Chief Actuary. The ability of the Chief Actuary to refuse to sign this statement gives him some leverage in the preparation of the projections which he did not previously have. I believe in the long run, however, we would be better served by having a standing board of independent actuaries and economists in no way beholden to the administration, who would in effect be responsible for the certification. Such boards already exist for the Civil Service and Military Service Retirement Systems. Public confidence in the freedom from political influence of the projections would be greatly enhanced.

I also agree with Mr. Light that the accumulation of the substantial surpluses in the trust funds projected for the 1990s is undesirable and, in fact, misleading since they tend to obscure deficits projected to occur begin- ning in the second decade of the next century. Once trust funds reach appropriate contingency reserve levels, tax rates should approximate current costs.

Dwight K. Bartlett, III President, Mutual of America Chief Actuary, SSA, 1979-81

Mediation Theory

To the Editor: In a certain way, I am grateful to Robert Rodgers for

his article, "An Interesting, Bad Theory of Mediation" (January/February 1986). It brings to the attention of a large audience, the readership of the Public Administra- tion Review, of my book, The Mediators (MIT Press, 1983). Unfortunately, the interesting, bad theory Mr. Rodgers purports to subject to "systematic, empirical examination" (p. 67) is not the theory reported in my book. Indeed, it represents a crucial misreading of the research to suggest that my theory of mediation is that federal mediators are orchestratorss" and always orchestrate and that state mediators are "dealmakers" and always try to make deals.

This content downloaded from 188.72.126.41 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 09:22:12 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

684 PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REVIEW

The theory that forms the basis for my qualitative field study is that full-time mediators develop an inte- grated approach to their practice that affects the way they diagnose a dispute and try to resolve it. These approaches are reflected in the ways mediators describe their work and can also be observed in the strategies and tactics they use while at work on a case. The central finding of the research is that there are two primary modes of practice-orchestrating and dealmaking. These two dominant roles or approaches emerged (they were not hypothesized prior to entering the field) from my observation of mediators and interviews with them while they worked on cases. In my study, orchestrating and dealmaking coincided with the practice of federal and state agency mediators, respectively. But I make no suggestion in the book that this coincidence would necessarily be generalizable. Quite the contrary. "This work does not intend to describe or analyze all facets (of mediation) but rather to focus on the mediators' per- spectives on its enactment. Nor do I mean to suggest that the perspectives delineated here would necessarily describe the practice of all other state and federal mediators. How well the analysis captures practice else- where would depend upon similarities in organizational and environmental contexts that are seen to shape the definition of the mediator's role" (Kolb, 1983, pp. 21-22). Indeed, the fact that Professor Rodgers based his study around these two modes of practice and that certain tactics associated with each were recognized by his respondents confirm my central finding and attest to the usefulness of orchestrating and dealmaking as descriptive to two significant approaches to labor mediation.

Professor Rodgers claims that my theory suggests that "Federal mediators orchestrate all impasses; state mediators always cut deals" (p. 69). Again this conclu- sion, the basis for his empirical test is a misreading of my theory. Whether mediators prefer to orchestrate or to make a deal will depend on the complex interplay of their own background and experiences, the character and experience of the parties, particularly the chief spokesmen they regularly encounter on cases, and the organizational context in which they work. In this regard, differences in the parties and context between public and private sector cases are associated with the two roles. But whether mediators actually employ those tactics associated with orchestrating, or dealmaking, depends not only on the customary role and the usual context of practice but also on a host of situational specifics of a given case. Variations and exceptions to orchestrating and dealmaking are common, and I docu- ment not only these variants, but also the mediator's explanations for why deviations or variations occurred. In this regard, while antagonistic or hostile relations between the parties are likely to affect what a mediator does, the "intensity of a dispute" was never mentioned to me as a category of diagnosis. What behavioral theory would explain why and how intensity of dispute affects a mediator's tactics?

The fact that Professor Rodgers relies on cases

involving strikes as a basis to test my theory represents the final misreading of the work. He says "Kolb neglected impasses involving strikes; we neglect impasses settled short of a strike" (p. 68). Although strike situations are often the most dramatic, exciting, and perhaps the most challenging cases, they are also rare relative to the full-time mediator's caseload. Rodgers' data reported in the appendix supports this contention. With the exception of a few states, most of the mediators, both federal and state, were involved in only one or two strike situations annually, if that many. Integrated strategic approaches to practice are unlikely to develop from the rare experience of a strike; they are more likely to come from the routine, normal cases of everyday practice. Thus, building theory about practice must start with experiences that are most common. How well orchestrating and dealmaking describe what occurs in strike situations is a topic worthy of study; but to build such a theory requires a grounded understanding of how strike situations differ from the routine and how these differences translate into mediation strategies. Professor Rodgers does not contribute much to the development of such a theory.

Deborah M. Kolb Professor

Simmons College

Response to Kolb

To the Editor: Let's launch a more constructive approach to the

study of mediation. Recent work has shown that reviews of research are seldom comprehensive. Studies are often rejected as "bad" because they do not satisfy certain arbitrary standards set by reviewers. In a review of my study, Kolb suggests that my research be discredited because I studied strikes which are not the "normal" case. Arguments for the rejection of the "bad" studies, however, are typically disproved when the empirical evi- dence is considered. If such arguments are not chal- lenged, perfectly good data will be ignored. Worse yet, subsequent reviews of the selective body of research will be incomplete and misleading.

Kolb discredits my analysis because "integrated strategic approaches to practice are unlikely to develop from the rare experience of a strike." This is a hypo- thetical argument, subject to verification by the empir- ical evidence. The data in my study prove her conjecture to be false. Dramatic differences do emerge in the tac- tics mediators adopt under strike conditions: federal mediators were much more aggressive in the high inten- sity disputes, state mediators much less aggressive.

Kolb considered tactical maneuvers by the same mediator in a small number of cases. My analysis focused on differences in tactics across a large number of disputes. I'll not be discarding or discrediting the

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1986

This content downloaded from 188.72.126.41 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 09:22:12 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions