{"id":974,"date":"2006-11-16T10:31:40","date_gmt":"2006-11-16T18:31:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp\/2006\/11\/haggling_vs_higher_ground\/"},"modified":"2006-11-16T10:31:40","modified_gmt":"2006-11-16T18:31:40","slug":"haggling_vs_higher_ground","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/main\/haggling_vs_higher_ground.php","title":{"rendered":"Haggling vs. higher ground"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few weeks back, my MBA program hosted fellow blogger Drew McManus for a mock orchestra negotiation exercise. The idea was for the students to play professional symphony musicians working on a collective bargaining agreement (CBA) with Drew, who played the management of a fictious symphony. Drew went on quite a bit<\/a> about the experience. Although, as with real-life multi-party negotiations, his perspective of the process is one of many.<\/p>\n

The set-up was a CBA process between professional musicians and orchestra management, in which the background and budget documents were horribly incomplete, inaccurate, and perhaps even intentionally vague. These errors were part of the simulation, of course, building on Drew’s experience with the quality and clarity of financial and organizational information provided by management to musicians.<\/p>\n

These errors and inconsistencies were fairly quickly exposed by the mock musician team, who then refused to make a counter offer. They suggested that there was no meaningful basis upon which they could negotiate, and only evidence to the contrary that any mutual decision would be effectively managed. Drew mentioned that real-world musicians would always make a counter-offer, and that the bargaining process required them to do so. The mock negotiating team stood their ground, determined that no negotiation was possible with a management that was at least incompetent and at most intentionally deceitful.<\/p>\n

A lively exchange ensued, but the negotiations never continued.<\/p>\n

Of course, much of this tension and disdain was built into the simulation, to give students the flavor of the experience from the artist’s side of the table. In many cases, musicians are certainly met with incomplete or inaccurate information during negotiations. And in many cases, the operating needs of both sides require that they negotiate anyway to keep paychecks and concerts flowing, even though both sides know they are ignoring the larger problems.<\/p>\n

But I came away from the exercise struck by two things:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. That collective bargaining within professional orchestras is among the most depressing and structurally fraught processes of any cultural endeavor. And that those orchestras that manage it successfully (and there certainly are many) do so despite the structure rather than because of it.\n
  2. That the common bias — particularly in the symphony world — that management and musicians are on opposite sides of that bargaining conversation is both destructive and untrue (although I’ll admit it’s a persistent myth). There is tension between the preferred strategies and tangible outcomes, to be sure, but the ultimate goal seems quite the same: vitality, sustainability, excellence, and expression.\n<\/ol>\n

    I know that all of this is easy for me to say. I’m not a professional orchestral musician, nor am I an orchestra administrator. Fair enough. But if the simulation experienced by my students was even marginally close to reality (and I’m assured by several that it’s not unusual), very few of these passionate, creative, and insightful students will decide that it’s worth the grief.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    A few weeks back, my MBA program hosted fellow blogger Drew McManus for a mock orchestra negotiation exercise. The idea was for the students to play professional symphony musicians working on a collective bargaining agreement (CBA) with Drew, who played the management of a fictious symphony. Drew went on quite a bit about the experience. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-974","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=974"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/974\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}