Business Conflict Blog

In his keynote address to the Section of Dispute Resolution of the American Bar Association, MIT Professor Lawrence Susskind urged that it was time for ADR professionals to get involved in the failure of meaningful discourse in American public life, and to assist people to talk to each other about deeply held beliefs.  He focused on disputes that arise “when people describe who they are rather than what they want” and outlined an approach to dispute resolution that is distinct from the familiar Fisher/Ury interest-based model.

The underlying assumptions of interest-based facilitation — that the parties have interests, know their BATNAs, will seek maximum return without unnecessary delay, and will accept an agreement whose terms are better than no agreement – don’t work when people’s values, or their very identities, at at stake.  Abortion or same-sex marriage are not interests, or even principles; they define who some people are.  When these defining values are encroached upon or attacked, what facilitation model applies?  Read more »

Tags: Culture, Mediation, Negotiation

The International Institute for Conflict Prevention and Resolution (CPR Institute) has very seldom taken a position in amicus briefs or on pending legislation.  But its Board of Directors recently posted a 22-page letter to the leaders of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees “to voice out concern over the Arbitration Fairness Act of 2009.”  When the Sphinx speaks I guess we’d better listen.

Read more »

Tags: ADR Institutions, Arbitration, Public Policy

Thanksgiving is one of the most popular holidays of the year for Americans.  It is also culturally becoming.  We are encouraged to pause and reflect on what we have received, especially from those no longer at the table. 

(There are, as always, other ways to look at it — Ayn Rand famously called it a typical American holiday because it celebrated not Pilgrims, but successful production, in a selfish and therefore commendable feast of conspicuous overconsumption.)

Might we consider an accompanying holiday — one where, instead of thinking of what we have received, we think of what we might get rid of?  In particular, our resentments, our grudges, our get-back-ats, and our expensive, time-consuming claims against one another?  Rather than Thanksgiving Day, what about Forgiving Day?

(No, this isn’t religious — it’s commercially rational.  Read on!) Read more »

Tags: conflict management, Culture

One hot, lonely summer day in 1958, at our rural home near Crozet, Virginia, I was working on an 8-year old’s project: dislodging a big quartz rock that was buried in the gravel driveway.  After a few hours I realized the trowel just wouldn’t do the job.  So I found a wood chisel in my Dad’s tool chest.  “Ah-ha!” I thought, “This is just the thing!  I’ll reduce it to bits and dislodge it a chunk at a time!”  By the time Dad got back from work at 5:30 or so the quartz had not been reduced by much, but the wood chisel had lost about all of its utility.

Dad’s objections included the necessity of the objective (”You wanted to put a hole in the driveway?”), the soundness of the strategic analysis (”You were going to pound it to bits?”), and (particularly) the skill of the execution of this project ([eyes raised to heaven] “Son….”).  And ever thereafter, when he cautioned me about using ”the right tool for the right job,” his words had particular piquancy.

Which (obviously) gets us to the Arbitration Fairness Act. Read more »

Tags: Arbitration, Employment, Public Policy