As soon as the news of the Ukrainian invasion emerged in late February, I felt the urgent need to address in writing what had been unthinkable only days earlier but which has now changed Europe for good. At the same time, I felt a massive sense of despair and helplessness which rendered me mute. Weeks…
It was Thursday, February 24th, 2022. From the morning, I had been mediating a dispute between a grandfather and two of his granddaughters. Then, during the break, I switched on my phone and read the news. Very shocking news. As a person that has spent all his professional life bringing peace and understanding to the…
According to the Wikipedia, “Make love, not war” is an anti-war slogan commonly associated with the American counterculture of the 1960s. It was used primarily by those who were opposed to the Vietnam War, but it has been invoked in other anti-war contexts around the world since then. The part of the slogan – “make…
In the 1930’s anthropologist Gregory Bateson developed the concept of Schismogenesis – the creation of division. He defined this as ‘a process of differentiation in the norms of individual behaviour resulting from cumulative interaction between individuals’, or groups of individuals. A process of this sort can result in individuals or groups drifting apart, almost becoming mirror…
List of Must-Read Books for Every Negotiator Let me introduce you to my new project. I would like to put together a list of five books every negotiator must-read. And when doing this, I do not have in mind works directly related to negotiation and/or mediation such as Getting to Yes by Roger D. Fisher…
by Dr. Michael Komuczky, attorney at law at Lansky, Ganzger, Goeth, Frankl + Partner (Vienna, Austria), and Sima Ghaffari, ICC YAF Representative and associate at Ferdowsi Legal (Tehran, Iran) There has been a significant increase in the debate on multi-tiered or hybrid dispute resolution clauses, as can be seen in this Blog or the Kluwer…
From time to time I write a post inspired by music, film or a TV series. Today, once again, is a post inspired by a TV series recently released: Squid Game – where the bottom line is about human greed and its behavior regarding their closest ally, where keeping oneself alive is a matter of…
The Program on Negotiation at Harvard (PON) sends to subscribers a daily blogpost of interesting negotiation thoughts and analyses. It regularly visits the negotiation styles of world leaders with the idea that ‘by studying the negotiation styles of famous leaders, we can identify what to emulate and what to abandon’. Unsurprisingly it has shone a…
As mentioned in my last blog , the UK Civil Justice Council, in its June 2021 Report on Compulsory ADR , endorsed the idea, contrary to the ruling in the notorious Halsey case, that unwilling parties in dispute may lawfully and appropriately be compelled to participate in a DR process such as mediation. (As an…
“Humanity has outsmarted itself. With its ingenuity, this tribal ape has created a world its tribalism can’t manage. We know this…But the knowledge is not enough.” So began Martin Wolf in a recent article in the Financial Times following a meeting of the finance ministers of the G20 – one of the institutions created to improve…
