Artful Making: What Managers Need to Know About How Artists Work

Reconceiving versus Compromising

In daily life and politics, we use compromise as one of our

main categories for thinking about agreements or conflicts. We

know compromise as a primary tool of management and the

principle activity of representative government. In a simple

conflict between two people or groups, the efficacy of this

method, the necessity of it, seems clear. You say five, they say

three; let’s compromise on four. In a compromise, each party

gives up something while retaining an acceptable core of the

position. In some contexts, compromise is an excellent

method of working out conflicting actions and mutually exclu-

sive requirements.

Compromise ...