Originally from Journal of American Arbitration (JAA)

Preview Page

ONLINE DISPUTE RESOLUTION FOR BUSINESS by Colin Rule presents the big picture as to the use of online dispute resolution (ODR) by business.  The primary audience is neither the practitioner of dispute resolution nor the student of this discipline.  Instead, as Rule explains, the intended audience consists, first and foremost, of managers, CEO’s, general counsel, human resources personnel, labor lawyers, union representatives, and others in a business setting.  For the audience’s benefit, Rule explores a number of business applications in-depth, including consumer transactions, employment relations, commercial transactions, the insurance industry, and the federal government.  He provides an extensive list of the advantages accompanying the application of ODR in each setting.  Included in the detailed, and occasionally redundant, discussions of the various applications are case studies, which provide concrete examples within the respective settings.  These vignettes provide convincing evidence that ODR can bring about a successful conflict resolution mechanism in a variety of contexts.