War as Metaphor: Theories of Conflict, Negotiation and Resolution in Warner Bros’ “300”

Beneath the veil of romantic heroism that drapes across “300,” the quasi-historical action-adventure film that has laid siege to America’s popular imagination, lay a body of interesting and highly provocative negotiating conundrums.

On the macro level, I think the foremost question is whether it is possible to negotiate with a fundamentally irrational party. On the micro level, the questions parse out into three separate but interrelated theoretical puzzles: i) Can and should earnest, substantive negotiations occur in instances of gross power inequalities? ii) Are more powerful parties be better served by making demands of their opponents, or extending offers/requests? iii) Is it better for punitive consequences to be scaled-up or maximized from the outset?

The setup runs something like this:

King Leonidas, ruler of Sparta, a small but fierce Greek city-state renowned for its prowess in war, is approached by a team of emissaries from the court of King Xerxes, ruler of Persia, the world’s dominant imperial empire, seeking a token gesture — “earth and water” — of alms, recognition and submission to the authority of the Persian throne.

Leonidas, disinclined to submit, emboldened by Athens’ resistance to the Persian King, and enraged by the emissaries’ patronizing tone in the face of Spartan resolve, not only refuses to accede to Xerxes’s wishes, but proceeds to kill the entire team of messengers — an act that desecrates the customs of the Age and guarantees that Persia will respond with war.

Leonidas pulls together an elite team of 300 Spartan soldiers and engages the Persian army at Thermopylae (the hot gates): a narrow mountain pass that will negate the Persians’ numerical advantage, and magnify the superior tactical strengths of the outnumbered Spartans.

The Spartans’ defense is so fantastic, the number of Persian soldiers they kill is so great, that Xerxes sends to additional hosts of emissaries to the Spartan encampment in the hopes of brokering a cease-fire. The Spartans kill the first messenger (incurring more spirited offensives from the Persians, which the Spartan soldiers thwart); and the second messenger, King Xerxes himself, is confronted not only by King Leonidas’s refusal to submit, but also his scorn (forcing Xerxes to unleash his elite soldiers, which the Spartans defeat, albeit with greater difficulty).

In the end, Xerxes returns and through yet another emissary, offers Sparta and King Leonidas dominion over the entire Western world, if they would only bow before his throne. The Spartans refuse and kill the emissary. Xerxes, after being wounded by a spear thrown in defiant fury by Leonidas, gives the command to launch an all-out attack and the Spartans are eradicated.

The Pyrrhic exploits of the Spartans so inspire the city-states of Greece that they collectively take up arms against Persia and, in time, ultimately defeat Xerxes’s army.

Leonidas’s irrational fealty to the spirit of Sparta leads him to war against Persia — a war he knows that he cannot win — and to risk the destruction of Spartan civilization. In the Spartan mind — a mind conditioned from birth to glorify combat and death in battle — the BATNA (Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement), as well as the desired end, is war.

Xerxes’s power and the size of his army effectually precluded any (rational) person or state from resisting the wishes of the Persian Empire. Xerxes’s entreaties were merely token gestures of his beneficence; he knew that all feared his wrath, but wanted all to recognize his mercy. For the Persians, the BATNA is conquest; the target, however, is dominion (which cannot be obtained without war).

i) Can a negotiation truly occur between these two parties?
I think not. Xerxes wrongly assumed that Sparta would rationally prefer assent and life, to dissent, war and certain destruction; his miscalculation created an opportunity for Sparta to openly defy his power (making it, by definition, less than irresistible), and forced him into war. Conversely, Xerxes’s unmatched military strength made virtually every negotiation he entered into one of pure ceremony. Conquest was always a realistic option for him — a costly option, perhaps, but one that was eminently achievable. And if it’s true that parties negotiate to avert or avoid violent conflict (or some analogy thereof), then it’s also the case that Xerxes can’t earnestly engage in negotiation — by virtue of his power and dominance, he can only indulge in polite coercion.

ii) Are more powerful parties better served by making demands vs. offers or requests?
Clearly, Xerxes would have been better served by issuing Sparta an ultimatum: submit or suffer the consequences. For in any scenario involving submission, Spartans would be certain to choose war. Asking Leonidas for a token offering flamed the fire of Spartan pride and honor, and ultimately aroused their warrior fury. Demanding submission would have done the same, to be sure, but that option would not have suggested an exploitable lack of resolve on Xerxes’s part.

iii) Is it better for punitive consequences to be scaled or maximized at the outset?
Launching into all-out war guaranteed that Xerxes would incur the maximum cost in terms of money and casualties, but also opens the possibility of his army losing some measure of prestige. Additionally, if one responds “maximally” and the adversary remains standing, subsequent threats are rendered hollow. Xerxes might have been better served to engage in a “war” of attrition: embargoes, “divide and conquer” tactics among the Greek states, diplomatic pressures and subterfuge. This approach may have allowed Xerxes the option to launch an attack after the morale, resolve and reputation of Sparta had been diminished. Instead, Xerxes declares war from the outset — in the aftermath, he enables the creation of 300 martyrs and an enduring mythology that inspires a nation to do the impossible.

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This op-ed was originally published in a spring 2007 edition of “The Opportunity” — the newspaper of the NYU Stern School of Business.

The Psychology of Corporate Culture: A Conversation with Rand Gruen, PhD

Rand Gruen, PhD, President and Founder of Rand Gruen Associates, Inc., and architect of the recent Nickelodeon Business and Legal Affairs (BALA) Group climate survey, speaks to creative.reconstruction about the discipline of psychometrics, the intrinsic nature of organizations, and the impossible possibility of an ideal work environment.

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CREATIVE.RECONSTRUCTION: By way of background, can you talk a little about what drew you to psychology and psychometrics?

RAND GRUEN: I’ve always had an interest in psychology. Since childhood I’ve always been interested in why people do what they do. When I began studying psych in college, I discovered that it was organized into six different sub-disciplines [clinical psychology, personality psychology, social psychology, organization development psychology, biological/physiological psychology and developmental psychology]. I became interested in the assessment aspects in addition to the philosophy of psych, so I pursued expertise in both areas.

The assessment side is interesting because it provides a way to operationalize constructs that you’re interested in without having to use your armchair judgment. I came to consulting via academics, and part of what you do in research psychology is develop different types of instruments — instruments to measure stress-related emotion, corporate strategies, support processes in networks as related to depression, etc. When I came to consulting it seemed to me that there were gaps in the field both at the 360-level [wherein reviews are provided from both sides of the managerial line], and also at the climate-survey level. So we developed our own multi-dimensional 360 and climate-survey instruments that break down the climate of an organization into what we think are the main functional dimensions: communication, decision-making, reward, etc., and we created items for BALA based on those dimensions.

The climate survey we completed was customized to Nick BALA?

Yes. We always customize the climate surveys we utilize. We reuse the systems, but we recognize that corporate climates vary from company to company. MTVN (MTV Networks) is very different from Goldman Sachs, for instance.

The questions comprising the diversity survey, were they also customized to our culture?

The Nick BALA Diversity Team came up with all the questions on that survey. I had no role in creating that instrument — initially. They then asked me for some help. I made some comments on the question block. I felt there were a number of places where they were potentially going to create problems for themselves. They were asking 15-20 open-ended questions and they would potentially get 200 responses for each of those questions — an overwhelming amount of data. I suggested that they ask basic questions in an open-ended format, and then quantify and scale other questions from the original set. That’s how the transformation took place and yielded scaled responses.

Can you speak a bit about survey development and the relation of psychometrics to that process?

In developing a survey, you first you want to identify the universe of dimensions that you want to sample; then a set of items related to each of those dimensions and can be used to assess them. Question items should be relatively short and easily understood. You also want to minimize “doubled” items (items that ask two questions) that are related to a subject. Psychometrics then enables you to assess how well your scales work. You can measure internal-consistency reliability (how internally correlated the items are to each other) within a given scale, and you can measure the validity of those scales by correlating them with other outside dimensions.

For instance, one objective of the Diversity Survey was to gauge whether satellite offices looked or functioned differently from the NY offices. Another was whether people that had been at MTVN longer responded differently than shorter-term employees. A prime component of psychometrics is to use statistical techniques to compare whether the differences in averages or means are actually scientifically different — whether those differences are due purely to chance or whether the differences are, in fact, real.

What do you perceive as some of the limitations of psychometrics?

Statistics require that you be clear on what survey information means and doesn’t mean. Take for instance the response to the question about the effectiveness of future “off-sites” in promoting communication. Regional-office participants said that ‘yes,’ off-sites would be useful; NY-office people also said ‘yes,’ but less so. The differences were significant. But that doesn’t mean the NY people believe future off-sites wouldn’t be helpful. Psychometrics helps you assess whether these differences are due to chance. We’ll still get some error, but it enables us to limit it to a degree — five percent — that we’re comfortable with. Psychometrics enables us to say that the differences are real, but the magnitude of those differences is another question. Psychometrics doesn’t address the magnitude.

Psychometrics is also based on asking the proper questions. Any survey will provide data, but it doesn’t mean the data — or the questions — are useful.

You’ve mentioned that corporate cultures differ between industries — might there be any unique cultural challenges one would find in a “creative” environment?

BALA is a whole separate issue from MTV. In my experience, there are some issues that are shared by legal departments across the board. Where the culture enters the question — and this speaks more to your question — is that the kinds of things that people value and believe to be important varies between cultures, and that affects the lens through which they determine what is and isn’t problematic. A financial institution isn’t necessarily as team-oriented or diversity-focused as an MTV might be. There’s a tremendous emphasis on inclusion at an MTV. Other organizations are much more opaque and hierarchical: your boss tells you to execute something and that’s it. Consequently, someone from that culture probably wouldn’t feel that opacity is as much of a problem. There can be a lack of inclusion in both environments, but it only shows up on the problem radar in one of them.

Can you speak a little about the problems specific to legal departments at large?

In my experience, one thing legal departments struggle with is that they don’t bring in money; they provide services to other Groups that bring in money. Another is that lawyers have to determine whether initiatives or actions that these client groups seek to pursue put the company at risk. From the business-line perspective, the agenda is to take action that will further revenues. These two mindframes aren’t necessarily congruent. The business people want to do “X” and the lawyers say that you can’t do “X.” There’s the potential for them to develop an image as “foilers.”

Another is that the legal community is stratified: there are lawyers and there are non-lawyers. The combination of people with different backgrounds creates a level of tension within any organization. One of challenges is to acknowledge that the tension exists, to make everyone aware of it (people sometimes aren’t), and teach people to interact in a manner that alleviates or minimizes those tensions and differences as opposed to exacerbating them.

To what extent do you believe that “Diversity” effects managerial competency?

Keep in mind that I’m not a “Diversity” expert. Diversity often factors into the kinds of studies that we do, so I’m familiar with its organizational implications, but I want to make clear what subjects I have expertise in and which I don’t. That being said, it’s important to note that in my world, “Diversity” means something more than just ethnic or racial diversity. The challenges lawyers face in communicating with others — that’s a diversity issue. Assuming that you have good people that know the business, having a wider mix of potential influence on the decision-making and execution side of things can only strengthen an organization’s ability to develop good ideas — that would be true in any environment. If you’re a scientist looking at a disease, one could argue that you have the same issue: you want biologists, psychologists, sociologists and internal medicine people evaluating that disease. So on that level, I think that diversity is a good thing.

Can you speak a bit about the future of your field and how it will relate to organizational behavior and psychology?

One of the challenges at MTVN, to use a pertinent example, is to create good assessment instruments that tap important questions. That takes some refining over time. You also want to do periodic assessments of the same environment over time. We can find that situation “X” exists now, but the real question is: “What have we done about it, and has anything changed?”

Another challenge for the field is getting the go-ahead from an organization to dig in and do the dirty work, because it’s not a quick and easy thing.

You also want to be very clear with the entire organization as to what steps have been taken to address the problems that have been agreed upon as problems. So: good instruments, change measurement, and progressive steps towards improvement. I think these will be the core relation areas of my field and organizations going forward.

One of the risks and challenges in doing these kinds of surveys is lack of honesty or outright refusal to participate. Convincing respondents to be as honest and open as possible was a major challenge I noticed in BALA — and it’s a problem with psychometrics in general. There was clearly some trepidation within BALA around that issue. I’m not assuming that people were completely honest in the climate survey or any survey; that’s been my experience in organizations, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. But it can function to make the flaws of an organization worse; it can create the impression that things are OK, and consequently no resources are expended against the problem(s). I don’t think that people fully appreciate that. Respondents have to be comfortable taking the risk of being honest. Respondents need to learn that it’s OK to be honest. They’re not going to be penalized; there won’t be any repercussions. Exploit the opportunity to improve the organizational culture, but fully appreciating that it takes time.

My hope is that people will see that with the general survey we will be very forthright in communicating the results in a systematic and constructive way, that action will be taken to address any problems that are identified, and that we’ll go back in, and measure, again, whether there’s any change that’s taken place. That’s the challenge in surveying any organization: for people to become more honest over time.

Is the corporate utopia ever a realistic possibility?

The reality of the situation is that there are always problems in organizations: there are always good managers and bad managers; there always the tensions that exist between people with different backgrounds; there’s always the tensions between people at different title levels; there’s always the tension between someone who’s the CEO, or EVP, or SVP, or VP, and someone whose an administrator. Some people can navigate those disparities better than others. It’s the nature of human beings to have difficulty communicating. The challenge is to be honest with the problems that exist, and chip away at them. There’s no such thing as a perfect work environment; it’s not the nature of human beings. But to the extent that organizations are willing to acknowledge where their limitations are in a very direct and clear way — and to address them — I think that’s the best you can hope for. Because if that’s done earnestly, the organization will improve itself over time.

So the responsibility falls equally then on the managers and those managed?

Absolutely.

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An edited version of this article was originally published in the Summer 2005 edition of RUFUS — MTV Networks’ intra-organizational newsletter.