Complaint systems

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaComplaint Systems Within an Organization

The last four decades have seen innovations in intra-organizational complaint systems. There is a substantial history of scholarly work on due process, and union and non-union grievance procedures within organizations. This work focused primarily on rights based conflict resolution between unionized and non-union workers and their managers.

In the 1970's and 1980's much interest arose in dealing with conflict informally as well as formally, and in learning from conflict and managing conflict. In contemporary language, these discussions centered on the “interests” of all who would consider themselves stake-holders in a given conflict—and on systems change—as well as resolving grievances.

These discussions led to questions of how to think about complaint systems and how to link different conflict management offices and processes within an organization.Papers about a systems approach began to appear—for dealing with complaints within organizations. (See Ronald Berenbeim, Non-union Complaint Systems: A Corporate Appraisal (NY: The Conference Board, Report No 770, 1980) and Mary P. Rowe, PhD, "Are You Hearing Enough Employee Concerns?" with Michael Baker, in Harvard Business Review, Vol. 62, No. 3, (May-June, 1984), pp. 127-136; and "The Non-Union Complaint System at MIT: An Upward-Feedback Mediation Model," in Alternatives to the High Cost of Litigation, Vol. 2, No. 4, (April, 1984), pp. 10-18.)

Many authors have extended work on the topic of internal complaint systems. Early contributors include Douglas M. McCabe (See Corporate Non-union Complaint Procedures and Systems (NY: Praeger, 1988) and Ury, William J., Jeanne M Brett, and Stephen B. Goldberg, Getting Disputes Resolved: Designing Systems to Cut the Costs of Conflict, the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, Cambridge, MA (1993). Ury, Brett and Goldberg in particular described conflict resolution within organizations in terms of interests, rights and power and the possibility of looping back from rights-based processes to interest-based solutions.Cathy Costantino and Cristina S Merchant (Costantino, C. and C.S. Merchant. 1996, Designing conflict management systems. San Francisco), and Karl A. Slaikeu and Ralph H. Hasson (Slaikeu. K.A. and R.H. Hasson. 1998. Controlling the costs of conflict: How to design a system for your organization . San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.) extensively explored issues of designing conflict management systems.

The concept of an integrated conflict management system was conceived and developed by Mary Rowe, in numerous articles in the 1980's and 1990's. She saw the need to offer options for complainants and therefore a linked systems of choices within an organizational system. (See "People Who Feel Harassed Need a Complaint System with both Formal and Informal Options," in Negotiation Journal, April, 1990, Vol. 6, No. 2, pp. 161-172.)

The idea of a systems approach has endured well. In recent years however, there has been discussion as to whether conflict should be “managed” by the organization or whether the goal is to understand, deal with and learn from conflict. There is also concern about practical and theoretical issues in “integrating” a system, with some observers preferring the idea of “coordinating” a conflict system.