https:/.../2019-09-09_hdo301_pt1.mp4

♪ (music) ♪

Live from the University of Texas
at Austin

The Liberal Arts Development
Studio,

and the College of Liberal
Arts, present:

Introduction to Human Dimensions of
Organizations.

And now, here is your professor,
Doctor Art Markman.

Hey, everybody, it is Monday, it's our
first Monday together,

and we have folks in the studio again,
say "hello," everybody.

Students off camera: Hello!

Alright, hope you could hear that
at home.

Yeah, so I'm excited to be here,

and hope that the Longhorn loss on
Saturday didn't drag the weekend

down for too many people.

But, what we're going to do today is we're
gonna shift disciplines a little bit.

So, if you think about where we were last
class,

we were talking about sociology
and anthropology,

we were talking about the kinds of
relationships that people engage in,

we talked a little bit about the content
there, the four types of relationships,

we talked about methodology,
how in the world would you study this,

and then we talked about practice,

that is, what is the influence of these
kinds of relationships

on the way that people negotiate
with each other.

So we went through that in the field of
a social science,

and now we're gonna shift and

we're going to move
to one of the humanities.

In particular, we're going to talk about
history.

And, in fact, history is going to make up
several of the next lectures.

So today, we're going to talk about some
ancient history,

going back to ancient Greece.

Then next class, we're going to shift to
something more modern,

go to the 1970's, where we're going to
talk a little bit about Nixon,

and his ability to open up a relationship
with China,

and then, the following week, actually
on the following Wednesday,

we're going to have a special guest in
class. An actual, live historian,

who's going to talk a little bit about
what it means

to do research in history.

And so, the focus today and on
Wednesday is going to be

on the content and practice associated
with these episodes from history.

And then, we'll have one special class
where we'll talk about methodology

in history.

So that's kind of where things are going
to be going.

We're going to focus today a little bit
on the concept of power,

and how that relates to negotiation.

And we're going to start by thinking
about the concept of power

by actually looking at a negotiation back
from Ancient Greece.

So we're going to talk about what happens
when you can dictate the terms,

because you are negotiating from a
position of extreme strength and power.

We'll focus on the Melian Dialogue,

which was written as part of the history
of the Peloponnesian War

by, it was written by Thucydides.

And then we'll actually ask the question:

So, should the powerful folks always
win?

Should they always get what they want?

And what does that mean?

And that'll actually touch on some of the
ethical issues associated

with using your power.

And along the way, I'm going to have to
show you a map.

So, there's a cool map utility
we've got here,

so you're going to get to see me
fumble with technology

in yet a new way this class.

So, to get started, I want you all to
think for a moment -- in fact,

I'm going to give you ten or fifteen
seconds to write this down

for yourself --

I want you to ask yourself:
What is power?

So take a moment, and just write
this down.

If you hear about the concept of power,
what exactly does that mean?

(pause)

This, by the way, is not your quiz,

that'll come later, this is just
something to write down.

And after you've thought a little bit
about the concept of power,

I want you to also think a little bit
about negotation.

So remember, we talked about this idea of
negotiation being:

we've got conflicting goals, we've got two
parties or sometimes more parties,

but let's just think about two
different parties working together,

they have conflicting goals,
they are negotiating in order

to try to figure out who's going to get
what they want in the course

of achieving those goals.

So now I want you to think for a second,
having written down your

definition of power,

I want you to write down: what does power
allow you to do when you're negotiating?

(pause)

Take a couple of seconds to do that.

(pause)

You can even chat with each other about
this on the chat facility, if you want.

But the reason I want you to do this
is because whenever we're teaching

anything, one of the things that we're
trying to do is to have you

actually make your own bets on things,

that is, to really think about:
"Well, what do I know already?"

The issue isn't to be right or to wrong.

It's that we want to influence the way
that you're thinking about things

and so the best way to do that is, for us
to pull that up from your memory

so that it's a concept that active
and ready for you to play with.

And then we can manipulate that
concept a little bit.

So when I ask these kinds of questions,

it's really just to get you thinking
about these kinds of concepts.

So, if we think about the notion
of what is power,

let's actually dive into this by asking:
"Well, what can you do with power?"

So, power could be physical strength,
but it need not be physical strength,

power can also be, can also involve,
having control over resources,

because a lot of what power is all about
is the ability to control an outcome.

So, if you think about life, anytime
you engage in an action,

there is the influence of the
circumstance of what's going on,

and then there's the influence over what
you bring to the table:

your physical attributes, your mental
attributes, your resources.

And so, think about it like this.

To the degree that you can control
what's going to happen next,

rather than the circumstances controlling
what's going to happen next,

you have a degree of power.

And, to the extent that the circumstance
is controlling what's going on,

then the circumstance has the power,

and you really don't.

And so, the circumstance could be
the physical situation, right,

if you're caught in a tidal wave,
then it's a physical circumstance

that has overpowered you.

But, you might also be
in a social environment,

in which someone else has physical
strength, or resources, or something else.

And that gives them the power.

So, to the extent that the situation is
governing what's going on,

you are relatively powerless.

And, to the extent that you can actually
influence what's going to happen,

you have some degree of power.

And, the factors that create that power
depend on the nature of the circumstance.

If you're playing defensive line for the
Longhorns,

then it is physical strength that guides
power,

and a little bit of mental understanding
of what's going on in the game.

If you are negotiating with someone
over a business deal,

then your physical strength may not
matter so much,

but your economic strength
might matter.

And, of course, as you read in the
Melian Dialogue,

we had Athens who was a military
power,

so they had a tremendous amount of
military strength that they were

bringing to bear, that enabled them to
influence outcomes.

And so, when you have a degree of power,

one of the things that that enables you to
do in a negotiation

is to begin to control that outcome.

Now, in some negotiations,
one side has most or all of the power,

in which case, they have an opportunity
to really dictate

everything that's going to go on.

In many negotiations, of course, each
party has some source of power,

that they will bring to bear on
the negotiation.

So, for example, if you think about
labor negotiations for a second.

You have the employer,
who has a certain amount of power,

because they get to decide how much
they'd like to pay people,

what resources they're going to bring
to that employment situation.

But if you have a labor negotiation,
let's say with a union,

or some kind of collective bargaining,

then the employees also have some
potential power,

because they might choose not to come
to work, or to slow things down at work.

And so, each side is exerting it's power

in order to try to come to
some accommodation,

because presumably the employer wants
to pay as little as possible,

in order to get the work they want
out of people.

While the employees would like
to make as much as they can.

And, of course, that's a bit of an
over-simplification of

the way that labor negotiations work,

but you have a conflict of interest,

and different sides have different
amounts of power.

And, in fact, if you think about trying
to development a certain amount of power

in a negotiation context

-- one of the reasons that unions
developed in the first place --

is because when people negotiated as
individuals against a big company

it's often very difficult for the
individual to have any power at all,

because if that person chooses not to
come to work,

there might be plenty of other
people who are willing to come in.

And it is that collection of individuals
that provides more power

to the folks on the
employment side,

and that gives them a little bit more
opportunity to try to control the outcome.

So again, this concept of power is that:

whatever the circumstance is, it is
the ability to have some amount of

control over the situation,

rather than having the situation and the
people in it having some degree

of control over you.

So that's really where we're
going with this.

And, by the way, as we get into the
Melian Dialogue,

what I want you to be thinking about
is -- a lot of times we're going to

use terms, and I'm going to seemingly
belabor the point here,

where I'm going to, you know,
dig into what some of these terms mean --

and part of the reason for doing that is
because a lot of times

we throw words around without
necessarily really thinking deeply

about what influence they have.

The more that you understand where
these terms come from,

and what they mean,

the better able you're going to be
to manipulate those when

you're in a situation in which
you have to influence what's happening.

Alright lets dive into the Melian Dialogue

So, the Melian Dialogue involves
the island of Melos,

and the Melian Dialogue happened on the
island of Melos between

Athens and the Melians.

And this was an invent that was
laid out by Thucydides.

And Thucydides was an ancient Greek
historian,

so he was born about 460 BCE

-- and remember the years as we get up
to the start of the common era

will count downward until we get to zero,

and then we'll move up to the common era
dates that,

we're in 2019 now, as I'm taping this --

So, he was born about 460,
and of course oddly enough

people didn't really have good birth
certificates back then,

so we just know he was born
in that vicinity.

And he died sometime after 404.

He was the son of a wealthy Athenian,

and, of course, if you go back to ancient
Greece or ancient Rome,

a lot of what we know about that era
tends to be stuff that comes from

people who had some degree of wealth.

Unfortunately, we don't learn a lot
about the people who are

sort of the common folks,

because they didn't necessarily have
access to the ability

to write a history of things.

A lot of what we learn about the daily
life of the more common folks

during these eras comes from
archaeological digs,

in which we're able to look at housing
and what people ate,

and things like that.

There isn't as much of a written record.

So we tend to get records from wealthy
folks and people who

played significant roles during
that period of history.

So, what we have is Thucydides
who wrote a history of

the Peloponnesian War.

He was a general during the war, so
played a pretty prominent role,

got that generalship in part because

he was already part of the wealthy
class in Athens.

And after the war was over, he wrote
a history of the war that

provides a tremendous amount about
what we know now about

the Peloponnesian War.

And so, what in the world is the
Peloponnesian War?

Well, it is a conflict between two
nation-states:

Athens and Sparta.

And they differed in a variety of ways,
and in particular,

they differed sort of politically and
in their overall orientation

towards thinking about life.

So Sparta was a monarchy, so they
had a king.

They were fairly conservative,

meaning that they were
resistant to cultural change.

They really wanted to keep things
relatively the same as they had been

for many years.

And so, they represented one pole of
society in the area around Greece.

And then there was Athens.

And Athens was a second nation-state.

This was a democracy, so there was
actually more power given to the people.

And, Athens was a much more innovative
society.

They really were interested in innovation
in a variety of ways:

innovation politically, innovation in
terms of invention and technology,

and so it was a much more open
and free-flowing society.

And, you know, often we see conflicts
that occur between groups that are

relatively more open, and groups that are
relatively more traditional

because that creates a significant
conflict of interest.

And, at some point, when a conflict
of interest breaks down,

and so you try to negotiate,

whenever you have, you know,
a conflict between nation-states,

one of the things that happens is you
often start by trying to negotiate,

and when negotiations break down,

you need some other mode of
resolving a conflict.

And, of course, in the second-third and
the middle-third of this class,

we're going to talk a lot about
different modes of conflict resolution.

But one of them we're probably
not going to spend a ton of time on,

is open warfare.

And that's something that happens
between nations

where you can't resolve the conflict,

so what do you end up doing?

You end up going to war and bringing
your military strength to bear on this.

So the conflict between Sparta and Athens
boils over and turns into a war,

the Peloponnesian War began in
431 BCE,

and the first phase of the war
lasts for ten years.

And I want you to think for a moment
about this.

You know, when you think about wars
in the modern era,

many of the wars that we hear about
are really not that long, right?

You know, World War One, the US
is involved in this for three years.

World War Two, the United States
is involved, you know, for five years.

And these are relatively short, and these
feel like long wars to us,

and yet they really were
much shorter than something

like the Peloponnesian war,

in part, of course, because you don't
have airplanes

that can get around the world in a day.

And so, when someone's going to go to war,

they're going to have to sail to
get there.

And, so, I'll show you a map in a
few moments of the area,

but in order to get from one place
to another,

you're hopping on a boat.

So everything takes a fair amount of time,

and there's a lot of seige warfare,

where you surround a place for a while,
try to starve people out.

So, warfare takes place over a long
period of time.

The Peloponnesian War no exception
to that.

So, the first phase of the war about ten
years long.

And it's really Athens is the one who's
leading here,

they're the ones who are having the
primary success.

And then, then there was 'half-time',
there was a seven-year truce

where they tried to work things out
via negotiation,

and so, and towards the end of
that seven-year truce is when

we're going to pick up the story
with the conquest of Melos,

which happened in 416 BCE.

And you'll notice that this is really
towards the end of 'half-time',

and then the war becomes
a kind of hot war again,

an open war, starting in
let's see, it's 414.

And it lasts another ten years,

and the second phase of the war favors
Sparta.

And this is going to become
important,

so what I want you to
remember here is:

first half of the war, Athens is largely
the one who's the victor,

then there's the truce,

then in the second phase we're going
to see that Sparta ends up

having a better time of it
in the second half of the war.

So, hold onto that,

because that's going to become important
as we understand

the implications of the Melian Dialogue.

Alright, so before we go to the map here,

I just want to tell you a little bit
about the siege of Melos.

So, the Siege of Melos, 416 BCE,

it's the tail-end of this
half-time period,

what was called the Peace
of Nicias.

Athens wants Melos.

So, so just because Athens and
Sparta aren't directly in conflict

doesn't mean that they're not
strategically trying to do things.

So, you know, as we look
at the map --

actually, why don't we go to the map
here, can we do this? Let's see --

Hopefully this'll work. If we go to
our map -- there we go!

We got Athens up here, so, this blue area
here is the Mediterranean Sea.

So, if you think of your world map
for a second,

the Mediterranean, you've got southern
Europe and northern Africa,

you've got a fairly large body of water,

hopefully you've had a chance to look
at that, maybe even visited

some of these places.

If we look at the map here, Athens is in
the southern part of Greece,

which is just a little bit east of where

-- so Greece, of course, a little bit
east of where Italy is today,

where modern Italy is --

Greece was one of the real world
centers at this point.

We've got Athens, and then Melos is
actually way down here.

So, if you've actually been to Athens
or been to this area of the world,

you know there's a lot of islands
around there and,

these days, kind of a a great place to
spend a vacation, but

basically and Sparta, which is not
really on the map, is sort of up here,

a little bit east of Athens.

And so basically, Athens wants
to control the seas.

And the way that Athens is going to
control the seas,

is by having outposts on the
variety of islands

that are associated with this area.

And so, they want to really conquer
the area, or at least,

have control over it.

So, I'm drawing here.

So they're going to go down to Melos
and really try to see what they can do.

So what they did was, they packed up
a force of about three-thousand soldiers,

a pretty significant number of people,
particularly when you realize

that you're going to have to
bring them on boats from

Athens all the way down to Melos.

And their aim was to bring
a show of force.

So they were showing their
military power.

You know, Melos is a small place,
you can see it's kind of a

tiny island, not going to have
three-thousand soldiers.

And so, Athens is bringing a superior
military force,

and the aim is to negotiate
with the Melians,

and that's where we pick up the
Melian Dialogue.

So that's kind of setting the stage
for where we are.

Alright, so what's going to happen?

Okay, the Melian Dialogue.

The Athenians come, and they want
to present a case

to the entire population of Melos,
that's their strategy.

And the idea here is several-fold.

The first, of course, is that, as I
mentioned, Athens is a democracy.

And so, beacuse they're a democracy,

because they believe that people
have the opportunity

to control their destiny,

they want to actually give a presentation
to all the people

in the hope that the people will vote.

Now, of course, there's two reasons
for them to want to do this.

One: Is that it's philosophically

related to what it is that they're
trying to accomplish.

But also, honestly, if you're an
individual, and you see

a whole bunch of boats out to sea
that you know are filled

with soldiers, and you're
an individual.

Are you really, as you look at this,
thinking to yourself:

"Yeah, our best strategy is going to
be to stand up to you."

As individuals, you're going to feel quite
a bit of fear, I think,

in that moment.

And so, I think that one of the other
reasons that the Athenians

wanted to present the case to everyone,

was basically to try and scare the
general population,

with the hope that these individuals
would decide that

they wanted to just give in to
whatever the Athenians wanted.

Now, the Melians, they had a
different idea.

What they wanted was this negotiation
to be done by a small number of leaders.

So they wanted the leadership of Melos

to sit down with the leadership of
the Athenian delegation,

and for them to hash it out.

And there are again two reasons for this.

One: Because from a leadership standpoint,

Melos is an independent group. They are
an independent island.

They are not aligned either with Athens
or Sparta,

and their government structure
involved a fairly small number

of people who governed.

And so, they wanted their
government structure,

the people who had the political power
in Melos,

to be the ones who actually engaged
in that negotiation.

And they wanted to do that with
the people from Athens

who were authorized to make a decision.

And part of that, of course, is just that
they wanted a negotiation

that fit with the way that they
governed their own island.

But the other thing is,
the Melians were aware of the fact

that the common person on the
island of Melos

looking out over the sea, and seeing this
superior military force,

they were aware of the influence
that that was going to have on everyone.

And so, they wanted to really have a
smaller number of people

involved in this negotiation who would
be willing to create a force

that might stand up to the Athenians.

So, you know, if there's some
possibility that you're going to

end up in a heated battle with
a superior force,

it's going to be very hard to get
people to want to do that

if everyone is involved
in that decision,

because many of the people who

are going to make that decision

are not really going to be the ones
who have to go to war.

And many of the ones who see themselves
as having to go to war

against this superior force

are the ones who might actually
not want to vote for that.

And so, you know, there's a reason why
the Melians might actually want

to bring just their leadership
to that situation.

So, ultimately the Melians get
what they want on this.

They actually have the opportunity
for a small number of Melians

to negotiate with the Athenian
leadership.

Now, when they get into this
negotiation,

and, if you've read this,

you're getting an overview of that way
that this negotiation went,

what you mind is that Athens is
primarily focused on their power.

After all, they've amassed three-thousand
soldiers on boats

to come and sit off the coast
of Melos.

And so they, on purpose, have brought

a display of force that should be
overwhelming to the Melians,

and their view is that should open
and close the negotiation.

And so, they come in
and basically say:

"Look, we want to take you over.
So come, let us take over

the island of Melos, install our own
government here, and

you can be now part of the nation-state
of Athens."

And they really aren't particularly
interested in negotiating

in any other way, because they know
that when push comes to shove,

they can come and take over the island,

if they want to, militarily,
and impose their own government.

And so they'd rather just have the Melians
willingly invite them onto the island.