From Russia with Love (plus tax)

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev sits in a car, a Vuitton bag at his side and the Berlin Wall in the background as he appears in a Louis Vuitton ad campaign.
(AP Photo/Annie Leibovitz, Louis Vuitton, HO)

The Nobel Laureate who once pursued 'glasnost' and 'perestroika' to revolutionize Soviet-style socialism transforming the geopolitical landscape forever is now out "brandscaping"in the flat world, for French luxury brand Louis Vuitton. It takes a Bold Comrade! to be 'peddling luggage' for Louis Vuitton in their new ad campaign themed “Exceptional People, Exceptional Journeys - The Art Of Travel. ” The hauntingly dark, gorgeous portrait shows the former Soviet president seated in a 1950s Kremlin limousine with a brown and gold Louis Vuitton duffel bag under a small pile of newspapers and magazines at his side and the Berlin wall at his back. The caption underneath reads “A journey brings us face to face with ourselves. Berlin Wall. Returning from a conference”An ironic juxtaposition of Gorbachev’s personal journey: from Communist Party leader to fashion model.

David Remnick's description of the erstwhile Soviet Union breaths life into Annie Leibovitz's photograph. "[A]n old tyrant slouched in the corner with cataracts and gallstones, his muscles gone slack. He wore plastic shoes and a shiny suit that stank of sweat. He hogged all the food and fouled his pants. Mornings, his tongue was coated with the ash-taste of age.... His thoughts drifted like storm clouds and came clear only a few times a year to recite the old legends of Great October and the Great Patriotic War." (Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire by David Remnick, Chapter 3 - To Be Preserved, Forever)

Charles Bremner of the Times Online writes in his blog titled `Back in the USSR with French luxury`, "He may be unloved in modern Russia but he is a giant. No lesser word applies to the man who wound down the communist empire of Lenin and Stalin and engineered the peaceful end of the Cold War. He shouldn't be selling capitalist luxury goods." From leader of the unfree, communist world, to a slave to capitalist fashion. As for now it looks like if the capitalist will sell you the rope you will hang him with, the communist will sell you his soul for the opportunity.

Gorbachev looks uncomfortable, but this was the man who carried around the sickle and hammer through the Cold War he should not look relaxed in a shot for one of the most elite brands in the world. Apart from being old, sick and tired, he sure does cut a lonely, pathetic and rather confused figure. His notable anxiety, the setting, the photography, the colors, the mood, the message - the mise-en-scène are all a part of the gambit of this astute advertisement. Getting Gorbachev to use the Berlin wall to sell leather is, to put it mildly, unseemly. As Gorbachev appears using a Louis Vuitton bag, the label is instantly associated with high-power, great thinkers, and everything classy. The ad campaign symbolizes the interweaving of high art, mass culture and commerce. Vuitton, part of the LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton luxury-goods conglomerate group started in 1854 as a trunk maker, says that it is celebrating its corporate "core values" and projecting the notion of travel as a personal journey in the new ad campaign.

New York Times reporter Eric Pfanner writes that the campaign bears fruit due to the "large shifts in the geopolitics of the luxury business". Pietro Beccari, director of marketing at Louis Vuitton, said the goal of the campaign was to broaden the appeal of the brand, particularly in relatively new markets like Russia and China. A high-class sector of powerful men, and those whose intent is to become one of them, will probably be attracted by Louis Vuitton, and they will more likely start using them. The campaign, developed by the agency Ogilvy & Mather, part of the WPP Group, reflects a move by some luxury companies to connect with the everyday lives of wealthy consumers. In the past, many fashion houses and other luxury brands relied primarily on the so-called product-as-hero approach, featuring their products, perhaps accompanied by a model, in a stylized, static image. The new approach integrates the products into more lifelike scenes. None of the celebrities in the Vuitton ads, for instance, looks directly at the camera.

The ad also states that Louis Vuitton and Gorbachev are supporters of Green Cross International – an environmental organization to promote sustained development which Gorbachev is the chairman of. Louis Vuitton differentiates themselves from other fashion brands by demonstrating that they are intellectual, and that their brand is for people who care about world issues. The LVMH group website now includes a brochure about their commitment to sustainability. This makes the ad both a political and an environmental statement, which, especially in today’s world, is a powerful combination. Furthermore, Vuitton states it was also making donations to former US Vice President Al Gore’s The Climate Project to fight global warming.

"The aesthetics of our era, our understanding of beauty, must be embodied in every painting, must become the most important part of Soviet art, which powerfully attracts the viewer to itself." - Konstantin Yuon, 1957

Attempting to understand the beauty of the portrait , we pose the question what is it that we learn from Gorbachev's personal journey? No man is separate from his environment. For Gorbachev, this means placing him in the backseat of a Kruschev-era limousine, gazing at the Berlin wall, taking him back to 1988. There is an added resonance for those whose habitats remain torn apart by conflict. For the rest of us, the bag symbolises the loneliness of the door-to-door salesman.

So how does it end Mr. Gorbachev, is it "Tear down this ad!", "Ich hab noch einen Koffer in Berlin" or is it "Ich bin ein Louis Vuittoner"?

P.S. The Russian Book Title reads: "Murder of Litvinenko. Treason for $7000"

Enhancing Organizational Effectiveness through Alternative Dispute Resolution Management

Abstract

As organizations restructure and social stresses escalate, conflict in the workplace is on the rise. Whether in response to organizational goals such as resolving disputes with customers and clients, systemic problems in hiring and promotion practices, or interpersonal issues between managers, employees and co-workers, businesses and government agencies are finding it more productive and cost effective to be proactive in designing systems to manage conflict.

Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) is a rapidly growing field, due to its popularity as an alternative to long and expensive law suits. Resolving disputes of any kind outside of the judicial system can save money and time as well as working relationships. ADR is responding to this important challenge by leading the way in designing integrated conflict management systems to effectively manage conflict both internally and with external stakeholders.

Introduction

Defining Organizational Effectiveness

An organization is an intersection of multiple influence loops; each influence loop represents a constituency bias within the organization. , In terms of its exchanges assessing the organizations activities. Organizations generate different assessments of effectiveness from its various constituencies; such as the distribution of organizational satisfactions, issues of organizational change and the time dimension as they relate to the overall institutional effectiveness (Connolly et al., 1980).

Cameron’s (1986) study of organizational effectiveness and its predictors suggest that the measurable for organizational effectiveness include:

• The most important factors associated with both static and dynamic assessments of effectiveness are environmental factors and management strategies.
• Proactive managerial strategies and those with an external emphasis are more successful than are reactive strategies and those oriented toward internal institutional affairs.
• Multifaceted managerial strategies are required in order for institutions to be effective.

Organizational effectiveness is inherently paradoxical. To be effective an organization must possess attributes that are simultaneously contradictory, even mutually exclusive. The presence of paradox is a paramount attribute in characterizing an effective post-industrial organization others include:

• Loose-coupling – encourage research, initiation of innovation, and functional autonomy-as well as tight-coupling-which encourages quick execution, implementing innovation, and functional reciprocity (Morgan 1981; Zaltman, Duncan and Holbeck 1973).

• High specialization of roles – reinforce expertise and efficiency-as well as high generality of roles-which reinforces flexibility and interdependency (Lawrence and Lorsch 1967).

• Continuity of leadership –permit stability, long-term planning, and institutional memory-along with infusion of new leaders-which permits increased innovation, adaptability, and currency (Chaffee 1984).

• Deviation amplifying processes –encourage productive conflict and opposition that energize and empower organizations-as well as deviation reducing processes-which encourage harmony and consensus needed to engender trust and smooth information flows (Maruyama 1963).

• Expanded search in decision making –allow for wider environmental scanning, access to more information, and divergence of input-as well as the creation of inhibitors to information overload-which reduce and buffer the amount of information reaching decision makers and lead to convergence in decision making (Huber 1984).

• Disengagement and disidentification with past strategies –foster new perspectives and innovation and inhibits defining new problems simply as variations on old problems-as well as reintegration and reinforcement of roots-which fosters commitment to a special sense of organizational identity and mission and past strategies (Tichy 1983).

Defining Organizational Conflict

In the organizational context, conflict is the process of expressing dissatisfaction, unmet expectations with an organizational interchange or disagreement with an interaction, process, product, process or service.

Conflict is a process and state of dissatisfaction; dispute is the product of unresolved conflict. This dissatisfaction can result from multiple factors: differing expectations, competing goals, conflicting interests, confusing communications, or unsatisfactory interpersonal relations.

Conflict is often ongoing, amorphous and intangible, a dispute is tangible and concrete – it has issues, positions, and expectations for relief. Clusters of disputes are simply one of the many ways that conflict manifests itself in an organization.

Discussion

Effectiveness of Organizational Responses to Conflict

Organizational conflict is really an organizational indicator of dissatisfaction. It is a signal of distress from within or outside the system. The organization may choose to respond to the distress call, but that does not mean that conflict ceases to exist.

Organizational conflict is manifested in several ways some of which include disputes, competition, sabotage, inefficiency, low morale and withholding knowledge. Chronic conflict in organizations is often due to internal disagreement and rivalry over how best to distribute the organization’s limited resources among competing priorities and components.

Measuring the effectiveness of conflict management involves looking at the results of dispute resolution efforts, the durability of the resolutions, and the impact on relationships. The effectiveness of conflict management efforts can be measured quantitatively or qualitatively; it can focus on the delivery of conflict management services or the results of conflict management interventions.

Conflict Management as a System

Emery and Trist (1972) pioneered the concept that improving the systemic functioning of organizations requires focusing attention on the social systems by which organizational members interact to produce results and on the technical systems that advance output and productivity in the workplace.

Open systems thinking encourage an emphasis on the whole and the interaction of the parts, not on the parts themselves as discrete, self-supporting entities. Open systems thinking require the organization be receptive and responsive to external changes.

Looking at conflict management as a subset of the many systems within the larger organizational constellation permits an enhanced understanding of conflict as it arises and a sharpened recognition of the opportunities for action in managing such conflict.

Characteristics of Conflict Management Systems

Conflict management as an open system operating within a larger organizational system and within a larger organizational system and within an external environment provides a useful framework for approaching conflict management system design and intervention.

The conflict management system gathers information through assessment, feedback and other participative methods. The open systems perspective in managing organizational conflict lends itself to attaining significant results like:

• Identification of key areas for inquiry regarding potential change within the input, transformation and/or output processes of the organization’s current conflict management system
• Uncovering dissonance, dysfunction, and dissatisfactions

The focus of conflict management systems design is to encourage and assist whole systems in recognizing and identifying conflict, learning how it operates, and actively involving management and stakeholders in designing and implementing systemic procedures that decrease dissonance and dissatisfaction and enhance achievement of the organization’s goals.

Alternative Dispute Resolution for Organizations

Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) enables a process that holds the promise of protecting the statutory, economic and enterprise rights of the employee while avoiding the possibility of slow and expensive litigation procedures along with addressing employer specifics like loss of productivity, sabotage, theft, harassment and violence. ADR implemented as a structured process using constructive multi-attribute techniques and value focused thinking is a comprehensive human resource strategy (Gregory et al., 2001).

Organizations can design conflict management systems to deal with both internal and external disputes in a productive way, and in a way that preserves rather than destroys relationships. Instead of resorting to litigation, strikes, work to rule or withdrawing, disputants can use dispute resolution processes that will resolve their conflict efficiently and effectively. Designing an Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) system can help improve communication, reduce costs, maximize efficiency, and preserve or improve relationships.

All effective organizations have goals. Those goals may be to increase productivity, provide a pleasant work environment, improve team work and efficiency, empower employees, reduce costs, or increase profits. The organization accomplishes these goals through its corporate strategy or, for larger organizations, partly through its human resources strategy. ADR systems can help an organization achieve its goals. ADR processes have the flexibility to adapt to the organization and help it pursue its objectives.

Specifications for an Effective Integrated Conflict Management System

Rowe (1997) suggests that an effective integrated conflict management system would include the following basic characteristics:

• Values of the system: A commitment to fairness for everyone involved in a dispute and freedom from reprisal.
• Many options: A variety of interest-based and rights-based dispute resolution techniques are offered to employees and managers, and employed for the clients of the organization as appropriate.
• Multiple access points: People with concerns and problems can find access points of different ethnicity and gender, and varied technical backgrounds, to help them. They provide a degree of privacy and support for various options in the conflict management system.
• An organizational ombudsperson: designated as a neutral, available to help informally with any workplace concern, and to provide formal mediation as appropriate.
• Wide scope: The system is used by professionals and managers with concerns as well as by employees. The system takes virtually eve~ kind of concern that is of interest to people in the organization.
• Continuous improvement: An oversight committee is built into the system and meets regularly to improve the effectiveness of the system.

Alternative Dispute Resolution: Why It Doesn’t Work and Why It Does

Carver and Vondra (2000) discuss the limitations of alternative dispute resolution. Used effectively ADR delivers the benefits like lower costs, quicker dispute resolutions and outcomes that preserve relationships. Companies with litigious corporate cultures do not reap the benefits of ADR-based mediation. Ingrained attitudes work against an agreeable outcome. Few companies have made the corporate commitment to ADR wholeheartedly; they manage to turn ADR into litigation-in-disguise.

The Supreme Court of Canada on June 8, 2007 declared for the first time that collective bargaining rights are protected in the 1982 Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The decision to strike down legislation aimed directly at taking away the rights of working people is a landmark according to the labour movement. The court has validated the sanctity of a contract, thereby disclosing the administrative and structural impediments of a system that hurts workers whose complaints are not resolved in a timely fashion. The inherent delays in labour and industrial tribunals and the courts. Not to mention the budgetary constraints and limited resources that dim the prospects of prompt or effective solutions to employment injustices (Zack, 1997).

Collaboration and consensual methods of employment dispute resolution have emerged in federal sector labor relations as an alternative to traditional, rights-based collective bargaining. In many circumstances, such alternative methods of negotiation result in both more acceptable agreements and a more satisfying process for reaching agreement (Rob Kirkner and Steve Sharfstein, 2000).

Conclusion

Conflict in and of itself, is not inherently bad. If it is dealt with productively, effectively, and efficiently, it can help the organization to prosper and evolve. When a conflict management system makes recommendations about effective ways of dealing with conflict the organization is not admitting failure rather it is proceeding in a logical and productive way to minimize the cost and time spent dealing with conflict and maximize the benefits of dealing with it efficiently.

An effective organizational conflict management system can have multiple implications for many groups of people. Some parts of the system will reflect back on the individuals within the organization – by serving as a model of communication and problem solving techniques that can be used in daily life with co-workers, spouses, partners, children, parents, and friends. Other parts bounce back to groups within the organization – by setting up processes for joint problem solving that engage people of all types, preferences, and backgrounds in working together toward a common goal. There are aspects of the conflict management system that are bound to shine through to help create a changed culture of choice and acceptance of conflict.

References

Carver, Todd B. and Vondra, Albert A., “Alternative Dispute Resolution: Why It Doesn’t
Work and Why It Does” in Harvard Business Review on Negotiation and Conflict Resolution, ed (Boston: 2000)

Cathy A. Costantino and Christina Sickles Merchant, Designing Conflict Management
Systems (Jossey-Bass 1995).

Chaffee E. E., "Successful Strategic Management in Small Private Colleges," J. Higher
Education, 55 (1984), 212-241.

Huber, G. P., "The Nature and Design of Post-Industrial Organizations," Management
Sci., 30 (1984), 928-95 1.

Kim Cameron “A Study of Organizational Effectiveness and Its Predictors”
Management Science, Vol. 32, No. 1. (Jan., 1986), pp. 87-112.

Kim S. Cameron “Effectiveness As Paradox: Consensus and Conflict in Conceptions of
Organizational Effectiveness” Management Science, Vol. 32, No. 5, Organization Design. (May, 1986), pp. 539-553.

Lawrence P. R. and Lorsch J, . W., Organization and Environment, Irwin, Homewood,
II., 1967.

Maruyama, "The Second Cybernetics: Deviation-Amplifying Mutual Causal Processes,"
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Morgan, G., "The Schismatic Metaphor and Its Implications for Organizational
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Putnam Linda L., Folger Joseph P., Communication, Conflict, and Dispute Resolution
The Study of Interaction and the Development if Conflict Theory,Communication Research, Vol. 15 No. 4, Sage Publications August 1988 349-359

Rob Kirkner and Steve Sharfstein, Aligning Traditional Collective Bargaining with Non-
Traditional Labor Relations, Interagency Labor Relations Forum, January 2001

Robin Gregory; Tim McDaniels; Daryl Fields (2001) Decision Aiding, Not Dispute
Resolution: Creating Insights through Structured Environmental Decisions, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Vol. 20, No. 3. (Summer, 2001), pp. 415-432.

Rowe, Mary. (1997) Dispute Resolution in the Non-union Environment: An Evolution
toward Integrated Systems for Conflict Management? In Workplace Dispute Resolution: Directions for the Twenty-First Century, ed. S. E Gleason. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press.

Stitt Allan J., Alternative Dispute Resolution for Organizations: How to Design a System for Effective Conflict Resolution, John Wiley & Sons Canada, Ltd. ISBN: 978-0-471-64295-4, January 2000

Terry Connolly; Edward J. Conlon; Stuart Jay Deutsch “Organizational Effectiveness: A
Multiple-Constituency Approach” The Academy of Management Review, Vol. 5, No. 2. (Apr., 1980), pp. 211-217.

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Arnold M.Zack (1997) Can Alternative Dispute Resolution help resolve employment
disputes? International Labour Review, Vol. 136 (1997), No.1(Spring)

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York, 1973.

Schadenfreude: Outsourcing Your Life

‘Schadenfreude’- This German loanword best describes the dilemma outsourcing presents itself with; 'pleasure taken from someone else's misfortune'. We live in a flat world where distance, measured physically, linguistically, and culturally, doesn't isolate our jobs from competition from far-away workers. In a post-industrial paradigm where sub-contracting all non-core activities is at the heart of what new economies do, the outsourcing of intermediate goods and business services is one of the most rapidly growing components in international trade.

However, outsourcing has moved on from being the purchase of inexpensive raw materials and standardized intermediate goods. Today concentrating growth in the company's core competencies, effectively utilizing internal intellectual leadership capabilities, maximizing market preeminence, lowering innovation infrastructural costs, optimizing corporate performance and enabling ‘guanxi’ is the strategic mission of the globalization and outsourcing agenda. (Grossman and Helpman, 2005; James Brian Quinn and Frederick G Hilmer, 1995)

Avant-garde corporatists with networked satellite or pod-like structured companies require nimble leadership that facilitate partnerships, collaboration, and sharing of time, personnel, resources, and credit with other units and organizations. Small business entrepreneurs want in on these cost-advantaged relationships that their corporate brethren have benefited from through outsourcing. The notion that - work gets done where it can be done most effectively and most efficiently is the guiding principle. Outsourcing has created a new economic reality where every person, just as every corporation, must tend to his or her own economic destiny as manifested within the global marketplace. (Arun Jacob, 2006; Edward E. Leamer, 2007)

In this era of outsourcing where every economic transaction is contested globally, intellectual work is readily commoditized and sold in global markets. New electronic technologies (e.g. personal computers, internet access, wireless information services) has greatly increased the productivity of those with natural intellectual talents but it has left the those with less talents with less to do and at a lower pay. Helpers are not required as individuals can source, create and produce their work independently. Educational and infrastructural investments are needed to keep the high-paying noncontestable creative jobs here at home and let the rest of the world knock themselves silly competing for the footloose mundane contestable jobs. Technology seems therefore to be taking us into a future where there are a few very talented, very well-paid people and the rest of us are doing the mundane computer-assisted tasks which don’t require us to read, write, or even think very much. (Edward E. Leamer, 2007)

Thomas L. Friedman in his book 'The World is Flat' speaks of a new global economic order which has come about from ten ‘‘flatteners’’ (three that connect individuals, six that facilitate collaboration, and a final one that enhances the first nine) and the "triple convergence" (Technological complementarities, Global business and communications networks, democratization of economic opportunity). Friedman surmises with the desirable characteristics for the workforce of the 21st century:

1. ‘‘specialization’’ (i.e., customizing products and services to specific demands),
2. ‘‘anchoring’’ (i.e., providing a geographically-dependent, inter-personal, or relational service) or,
3. ‘‘adaptability’’ (i.e., creating a market position as a low-cost or value-added provider relative to competitors).

Through the fragmentation of production into discrete activities which are then allocated across countries outsourcing and globalization poses a fundamental question about how companies respond to import competition and how their responses shape the domestic labour market. (Feenstra and Hanson, 1996). To successfully capture value from outsourcing, companies need to leverage their market knowledge, intellectual property, system integration and cost management skills. Most importantly a brand name whose value reflects its reputation for quality, innovation, and customer service will ensure maximum return on investment. (Linden et al., 2007)

"Following the customer" has shipped and packaged both the rust belt jobs (offshore manufacturing) and the high-tech jobs (outsourcing technology). Large and small companies alike are reducing engineering staff in higher-cost regions as they are no longer economically feasible. Unlike manufacturing jobs, which require significant investments in infrastructure, logistics, and facilities, white-collar service jobs require little more than a computer, software, and an uplink to the Internet. Without any differentiating skills, wages will migrate toward the global average. There’s bad, industrial-era outsourcing, where work is increasingly changing into a short-term contract culture, with long hours, adversely affecting employee loyalty, morale, motivation and perceived job security. Then there’s good, collaborative-era outsourcing., with the broad benefits of being able to connect into a rich, collaborative network of varied 'flat world' resources. Global companies create outsourcing value by transforming the innovations of others into products that consumers find useful and usable.(Byrant, 2006; Cooper, 1999)

Let us all remember what John Ruskin wrote in 1871: ``In order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: they must be fit for it; they must not do too much of it; and they must have a sense of success in it''.

References

Robert C. Feenstra; Gordon H. Hanson, (1996) “Globalization, Outsourcing, and Wage Inequality” The American Economic Review, Vol. 86, No. 2, Papers and Proceedings of the Hundredth and Eighth Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association San Francisco, CA, January 5-7, 1996. (May, 1996), pp. 240-245.

James Brian Quinn, Frederick G Hilmer (1995) “Strategic Outsourcing”, The McKinsey Quarterly, 1995, Number 1

Arun Jacob, (2006) “Implementing an Effective Leadership Development Program for Community College Students”, Communiqué - Volume 7, Issue 1, ERIC #:ED492857

Grossman, Gene M. and Elhanan Helpman, (2005) “Outsourcing in a Global Economy”, Review of Economic Studies (2005) 72, 135–159

Leamer, Edward E. (2007) “A Flat World, a Level Playing Field, a Small World After All, or None of the Above? A Review of Thomas L. Friedman’s The World is Flat. ” Journal of Economic Literature 45 (March): 83-126.

Greg Linden, Kenneth L. Kraemer, Jason Dedrick, (2007) "Who Captures Value in a Global Innovation System? The case of Apple's iPod", Personal Computing Industry Center (PCIC), An Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Industry Center, The Paul Merage School of Business, University of California, Irvine

Cary L. Cooper, (1999) 'Can we live with the changing nature of work?', Journal of Managerial Psychology, Volume: 14 Issue: 7/8 Page: 569 - 572

Paul T. Bryant, P.E.,(2006) 'Decline of the Engineering Class: Effects of Global Outsourcing of Engineering Services', Leadership and Management in Engineering, Volume 6, Issue 2, pp. 59-71 (April 2006) doi:10.1061/(ASCE)1532-6748(2006)6:2(59)

Article

Ellen Gamerman (2007) "Outsourcing Your Life" Wall Street Journal, June 2 2007

ACCC Presentation