Business Conflict Blog

In January 2001, I attended a CPR Annual Meeting in which Carrie Menkel-Meadow moderated a fascinating panel discussion on “Gender and Negotiation/Mediation.”  The question presented was: “Does the gender of participants influence expectations, behaviors, performance or outcomes in negotiation and mediation settings?”  The panelists included Charles Craver of George Washington University Law School, Deborah Kolb of Simmons Graduate School of Management, and Margaret Shaw, then of ADR Associates and now affiliated with JAMS.  Read more »

Tags: Negotiation

Wilbur Hicks, Ombuds of the International Monetary Fund (and before that for Shell and Princeton) has directed our attention to the Ombuds Blog.  Even a cursory review shows that this is a robust and (for me at least) hitherto overlooked resource for commercial conflict managers. Read more »

Tags: conflict management, systems design

My class in International Commercial Dispute Resolution at New York Law School is now finished, and each student was required to prepare a paper on a related topic of their choice.  All were good, happily, and some students wrote on topics that readers of this blog may find useful.  With their permission, I will post a few of them here over the next few weeks.

This paper, by Michael Martuscello, surveys the current state of business arbitration and mediation in Italy.  Of the many curious aspects he discusses, it is noteworthy that the Italian legislature, not the courts or the business community, seems to be the main driver of ADR and the main advocate for encouraging its use by business.  It is particularly interesting that, in compliance with the EU Directive, the legislature is ramping up a series of requirements that should make a big impact on the way business disputes are handled in the future — resulting perhaps in mediation rather than arbitration being the most practical way to address problems in a deal involving an Italian counterparty.

The text of the paper follows.  Please note that the citations appear as Endnotes. Read more »

Tags: Arbitration, Mediation, Teaching

The firm of Ogletree Deakins and St. Louis University recently held an all-day Employee Dispute Resolution Symposium at the University’s very beautiful Busch Student Center.  The proceedings were well-attended and it was a privilege for me to be invited to present the opening remarks.

The comments of the various speakers, many from in-house corporate programs and some from outside attorneys, suggested that the “center” has shifted over the past few years, and that comprehensive conflict management programs that seriously address employee concerns rather than gearing up for employment arbitration are very much the norm these days. Read more »

Tags: Employment, systems design