One of the most enjoyable aspects of the festive season is receiving and reading books that one might not have come across otherwise. This year, I have been enjoying two quite contrasting works of literature. The first is a Manual for Spectrum Agents (Haynes Publishing) providing “detailed information about the Spectrum organisation”, based on the…
This post was prepared by Christian Radu Chereji and Constantin Adi Gavrilă. There is one thing that strikes every researcher when confronted with EU/national legislation regarding mediation: when one reads the arguments of any piece of legislation, everything looks great. The powerful motives are formulated with excellent logic; but there is no follow-up, no monitoring…
Twice today I’ve found myself responding to mediator reflections in these terms: the money’s not about the money. Both cases involved financial negotiation, even haggling, but that’s deceptive. The key to settlement lay not in the realm of calculation and rationality but in the more opaque social world of face, punishment, justice and emotion. In…
What to write about this month? There is a lot on the go: General Election in the UK, Citizens Assembly in Scotland, Climate Change reports predicting the worst. What about mediation? That is an interesting question. I have been asked recently to act as an independent third party in two significant matters where the parties…
“Impasse” – a situation in which no progress is possible, especially because of disagreement; a deadlock. Last time I focused on impasse in mediation, I noted that in my experience as a commercial mediator, impasse most often flows from a combination of cognitive biases and flawed risk assessments. This post suggests ways mediators can…
We would like to announce an opening for the position of Assistant Editor for the Kluwer Mediation Blog. The Assistant Editor will report directly to the editors, Bill Marsh and Nadja Alexander, and will work closely with the Kluwer team. The essential duties of the Assistant Editor are: (1) reviewing and editing proposed posts; (2)…
“You’ve done what?” It took just a moment. The red mist descended. The words were out before I could haul them back in. “You’ve just gone behind my back and undermined what I set out, and we had agreed, we would do….you might at least have had the courtesy…..” The lawyer had just told me…
O wad some Power the giftie gie us To see oursels as ithers see us! It wad frae mony a blunder free us, An’ foolish notion. Robert Burns Those of us at the ‘Br’ end of the Brexit negotiation find it increasingly hard to know how others see us. Our media shovel up stories of…
“What’s the point?” asked the preacher, rhetorically. “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity” was his text, taken from Ecclesiastes, an Old Testament book apparently attributed to Solomon, whose wisdom we have all heard about over the years. The child and two women each laying claim to being the mother – and all that. What profit…
(I first wrote about mediation’s values 12 years ago at the tail end of a Masters in Conflict Resolution and Mediation Studies.(1) Two years of study had convinced me that it is our values, rather than the techniques we learn, that tell us what to do and say when when mediating. The intervening years haven’t…
