Matching Parties' Goals with Mediation Styles - Chapter 32 - AAA Handbook on Mediation - Third Edition
Nancy Kauffman taught human resource management, employment and labor law, and conflict resolution at the University of North Carolina at Asheville with many publications in those fields. She is a Member of the National Academy of Arbitrators, serving as Chair of the History Committee from 2006-2010. She has retired from university faculty duties, from labor arbitration, and from the Key Bridge Foundation which focuses on claims to the U.S. Dept. of Justice for Americans with Disability claims. In her 5th career, she is an artist who paints on bisque. Dr. Kauffman can be contacted at nancykauffman@bellsouth.net.
Barbara Ann Davis has a private mediation and collaborative law practice in Asheville, N.C., working primarily with separating and divorcing couples to help resolve family and legal issues outside of court, by agreement. Davis holds mediator certification from the NC Dispute Resolution Commission (dually certified in Family and Superior Court cases), US Postal Service, and the US Department of Agriculture, and is a certified mediation trainer with Atlanta Divorce Mediators. In 1984 Davis was the founding Executive Director of The Mediation Center, one of the first nonprofit community dispute settlement centers, where she coined the term “Mediation is Resolutionary!” Davis is a Member of the International Academy of Collaborative Professionals (IACP) and has taught numerous mediation and Collaborative law seminars/courses throughout the southeast. She can be contacted at bdavis@barbaraanndavis.com and her website is http://www.barbaraanndavis.com/
Lori Lester is a graduate student in peace and conflict studies, with a concentration in professional conflict practice, at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Her coursework and knowledge of professional techniques center around mediation, facilitation, and humanitarian issues. Lester previously served as Youth Mediation Coordinator for The Mediation Center in Asheville, NC, and continues to support the organization as a volunteer. Her related areas of interest include international education and fostering intercultural dialogue. Lester can be reached at lelester@uncg.edu
Originally from:
AAA Handbook on Mediation - Third Edition
MATCHING PARTIES’ GOALS
WITH MEDIATION STYLES
Nancy Kauffman, Barbara Ann Davis, and Lori Lester
I. Introduction
Mediation is becoming the dispute-resolution method of choice for businesses, organizations, and individuals in the United States. ADR, which used to stand for alternative dispute resolution, now has been reframed to mean appropriate dispute resolution, indicating a change from viewing facilitated negotiations as outside the norm to viewing them as fully accepted practices. The reasons for this paradigm shift in grievance-resolution mechanisms are twofold: outcome potential and process control.
In terms of outcome potential, mediation can result in significant financial savings, as well as improved settlement and participant satisfaction rates. For example, the U.S. Department of Justice reports an average cost of $1,007 to mediate a typical employment case, versus $17,000 to litigate. The United States Postal Service’s well-known REDRESS program claims mediation satisfaction rates over 90 percent during a five year period when it used mediation in ten thousand to fourteen thousand cases a year. Community dispute-settlement centers report similar numbers with an 85% resolution rate for clients who voluntarily participate in mediation, and parties upholding these agreements 90% of the time.