Dispute resolution or dispute settlement is the process of resolving disputes between parties. The term dispute resolution is sometimes used interchangeably with conflict resolution, although conflicts are generally more deep-rooted and lengthy than disputes. Dispute resolution techniques assist the resolution of antagonisms between parties that can include citizens, corporations, and governments.
Mediation is a structured, interactive process where an impartial third party assists disputing parties in resolving conflict through the use of specialized communication and negotiation techniques. All participants in mediation are encouraged to actively participate in the process. Mediation is a "party-centered" process in that it is focused primarily upon the needs, rights, and interests of the parties. The mediator uses a wide variety of techniques to guide the process in a constructive direction and to help the parties find their optimal solution. A mediator is facilitative in that she/he manages the interaction between parties and facilitates open communication. Mediation is also evaluative in that the mediator analyzes issues and relevant norms ("reality-testing"), while refraining from providing prescriptive advice to the parties.
Negotiation is a dialogue between two or more people or parties intended to reach a beneficial outcome over one or more issues where a conflict exists with respect to at least one of these issues. Negotiation is an interaction and process between entities who compromise to agree on matters of mutual interest, while optimizing their individual utilities. This beneficial outcome can be for all of the parties involved, or just for one or some of them. Negotiators need to understand the negotiation process and other negotiators to increase their chances to close deals, avoid conflicts, establishing relationship with other parties and gain profit.
In negotiation theory, the best alternative to a negotiated agreement or BATNA refers to the most advantageous alternative course of action a party can take if negotiations fail and an agreement cannot be reached. The exact opposite of this option is the WATNA. The BATNA could include diverse situations, such as suspension of negotiations, transition to another negotiating partner, appeal to the court's ruling, the execution of strikes, and the formation of other forms of alliances. BATNA is the key focus and the driving force behind a successful negotiator. A party should generally not accept a worse resolution than its BATNA. Care should be taken, however, to ensure that deals are accurately valued, taking into account all considerations, such as relationship value, time value of money and the likelihood that the other party will live up to their side of the bargain. These other considerations are often difficult to value, since they are frequently based on uncertain or qualitative considerations, rather than easily measurable and quantifiable factors.
John Thomas Dunlop was an American administrator and labor scholar.
The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS), founded in 1947 is an independent agency of the United States government, and the nation's largest public agency for dispute resolution and conflict management, providing mediation services and related conflict prevention and resolution services in the private, public, and federal sectors. FMCS is tasked with mediating labor disputes around the country; it provides training and relationship development programs for management and unions as part of its role in promoting labor-management peace and cooperation. The Agency also provides mediation, conflict prevention, and conflict management services outside the labor context for federal agencies and the programs they operate. The FMCS headquarters is located in Washington, D.C. with other offices across the country.
The term zone of possible agreement (ZOPA), also known as zone of potential agreement or bargaining range, describes the range of options available to two parties involved in sales and negotiation, where the respective minimum targets of the parties overlap. Where no such overlap is given, in other words where there is no rational agreement possibility, the inverse notion of NOPA applies. Where there is a ZOPA, an agreement within the zone is rational for both sides. Outside the zone no amount of negotiation should yield an agreement.
In negotiation, leverage is the power that one side of a negotiation has to influence the other side to move closer to their negotiating position. A party's leverage is based on its ability to award benefits or impose costs on the other side. Another conceptualization holds that the party that has the most to lose from a "no deal" outcome has less leverage than the party that has the least to lose.
The Mutual Gains Approach (MGA) to negotiation is a process model, based on experimental findings and hundreds of real-world cases, that lays out four steps for negotiating better outcomes while protecting relationships and reputation. A central tenet of the model, and the robust theory that underlies it, is that a vast majority of negotiations in the real world involve parties who have more than one goal or concern in mind and more than one issue that can be addressed in the agreement they reach. The model allows parties to improve their chances of creating an agreement superior to existing alternatives.
Business war gaming or business wargaming is an adaptation of the art of simulating moves and counter-moves in a commercial setting. In a complex global and competitive world, formulating a plan without testing it against likely external reactions is the equivalent of walking into a battlefield without the right weapons or a plan to win. In situations where the cost of being wrong is high, war games can be very helpful to understand from a 360-degree perspective the external opportunities and challenges of all the key stakeholders in the industry.
Frank E. A. Sander was a professor emeritus and Associate Dean of Harvard Law School. Professor Sander graduated from Harvard College with a degree in mathematics in 1949 and from Harvard Law School in 1952. Professor Sander pioneered in the field of alternative dispute resolution and is widely credited with being a father of the field in the United States as a result of his paper, The Varieties of Dispute Processing, presented at the Pound Conference in 1976 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Professor Sander's book, Dispute Resolution: Negotiation, Mediation, and Other Processes, which he coauthored with Stephen B. Goldberg, Nancy H. Rogers, and Sarah Rudolph Cole, is used in law schools throughout the United States.
Gilead Sher is an Israeli attorney who served as Chief of Staff and Policy Coordinator to Israel's former Prime Minister and Minister of Defense, Ehud Barak. In that capacity he acted as one of Israel's senior peace negotiator in 1999–2001, at the Camp David summit in 2000 and the Taba talks in 2001, as well as in extensive rounds of covert negotiations with the Palestinians.
Lawrence E. Susskind is a teacher, trainer, mediator, and urban planner. He is one of the founders of the field of public dispute mediation and is a practicing international mediator through the Consensus Building institute. He has taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 1971.
William Ury is an American author, academic, anthropologist, and negotiation expert. He co-founded the Harvard Program on Negotiation. Additionally, he helped found the International Negotiation Network with former President Jimmy Carter. Ury is the co-author of Getting to Yes with Roger Fisher, which set out the method of principled negotiation and established the idea of the best alternative to a negotiated agreement (BATNA) within negotiation theory.
The Harvard Negotiation Project is a project created at Harvard University which deals with issues of negotiations and conflict resolution.
Robert Harris Mnookin is an American lawyer, author, and the Samuel Williston Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. He focuses largely on dispute resolution, negotiation, and arbitration and was one of the primary co-arbitrators that resolved a 7-year software rights dispute between IBM and Fujitsu in the 1980s. Mnookin has been the Chair of the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School since 1994.
Mitchell Hamline School of Law is a private law school in Saint Paul, Minnesota. It is accredited by the American Bar Association (ABA), and offers full- and part-time legal education for its Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree. It has a current estimated alumni of over 19,000 lawyers. The school offers more practical externships than any other school in the Upper Midwest. It was the first American law school to offer an ABA-accredited hybrid J.D. program.
Michael A. Wheeler has taught negotiation at Harvard Business School in its MBA program, executive courses, and, more recently, its digital learning platform HBX. His work focuses on negotiation pedagogy, improvisation in complex dynamic processes, ethics and moral decisionmaking, and a range of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) processes. For twenty years he was the Editor in Chief of Negotiation Journal, published by the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School. As a LinkedIn Influencer, he has more than 200,000 followers. As a negotiation advisor, Wheeler has counseled corporate clients, trade organizations, and government agencies on issues in the United States and abroad.
David Lax is an American negotiation expert, author, speaker, statistician and academic. He is currently a Distinguished Fellow at the Harvard Negotiation Project, Managing Principal of Lax Sebenius LLC, a firm that advises companies and governments in challenging and complex negotiations, and a former professor at Harvard Business School.
