Neutrality as Impartiality & Neutrality as Equidistance - Article Example

Neutrality as Impartiality & Neutrality as Equidistance This chapter attempts to discover if there can truly be a neutral mediator and if so, how or when does it happen. The article starts off discussing the 2 types of neutrality recognized in mediation: neutrality as impartiality & neutrality as equidistance. In the first one, it is when no personal bias is present in mediators. Ideal but impossible, according to the article and so it continues by giving alternatives to this type of neutrality. For the second type, parties are both given powers by the mediator to prevent them from coercing each other. Since a situation for power imbalance has yet to be set, the article afterwards lists the five elements of power according to Mnookin & the methods how to recognize power imbalance. It then talks about accountability or the need to keep the mediation in private to protect post-negotiation matters. For a conclusion, the author says some researchers suggest that mediators just come clean with their biases so as to give the couple an idea of how the mediation would lean to. Still others recommend going up a notch higher & for mediators not to introduce themselves as a neutral third party. The strength of this article lies in its simplicity. It presented the issue, answered it and made its conclusion. However, there were 3 ½ pages dedicated to explaining accountability. I think this is its weak point. It made it lengthy. It doesn’t help, too, that in the conclusion a line appeared stating “Neither power balancing nor protecting third parties is consistent with impartiality.” If so, I don’t see the need to have 3 ½ pages on accountability. (8) This article is about a study that tested whether, in a social conflict, a party follower does influence decisions of judgment & trustworthiness in mediation. In other words, the study will examine the effect of content and source bias in determining if the mediator can be trusted or if his proposals are fair. In relation to this, the study will also check if the reason for this is self-serving. If so, the reasons will be differ between partisans & nonpartisans. The test was done in correlation with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. According to the article, judging whether the third party is trustworthy was based on favorableness of proposals (for the partisans) and fairness of the proposals (for the nonpartisans). This can pose problems, the article says, when the third party needs the trust of the disputing parties and the nonpartisans. It explains that impartiality is an important source of trust in the third party which largely influences the party’s. They also have a description of what partisans & non-partisans consider a fair mediator. suggestions in the mediation. However, it continues, mediators who may be bias or partial can be effective unbiased 3rd parties, too, especially in conflicts political in nature. I think that the strength of this article is that it’s rich in information. They have everything explained from hypotheses to table & appendixes. I just wonder though if all the information in the paragraphs can be further summarized to make each topic more concise. As it is, most of the paragraphs under subheadings are explained lengthily, in my opinion. There is also no conclusion in the article. If there is, the reader must assume where. I think it would be helpful to have a conclusion, especially for an article filled with so much information such as this one. I say this because, given the number of pages for it, I personally looked for the conclusion first to try and get a grasp of the whole idea & the result/s of the study. (9) This article is the result of an experiment done to test whether the opportunity to speak out one’s opinion & the sharing of relevant information does help to acquire a fair judgment in decision-making. According to the article, the “process control effect” by Thibaut and Walker or the “voice effect” as called by Folger is probably the best-documented phenomenon in procedural justice research. It states that as long as there is an opportunity to express one’s views and opinions before a decision is made, even if the person making the judgment of fairness doesn’t have control over the decision, this leads to procedural fairness. Before discussing the steps to the experiments, the writers shared theories which attempted to explain the psychology of procedural justice. They then shared that their experiment would attempt to test the noninstrumental voice effects before, during & after decision-making. They would also test it with relevant, irrelevant & no information provided to the subjects. A detailed explanation of the experiment process was subsequently given. The rest of the article was devoted to the results and a discussion of such. The strength of the article is in their explanation of the experimental method. They started with the subjects, the design, the procedure & how they were going to measure the responses. These had their own subheadings & were explained using simple terms & concise statements giving an outsider to procedural justice a clear image of what the researchers did. This was an exact opposite of the Results part, though. I think this is the weak point of the article. In here, the writers mentioned a MANOVA they used on the results of the experiment. All the numbers, explanations & terms used here were truly complicated for me to understand. I think it would’ve been better if they included a scale of the MANOVA if possible, which I could’ve referred to whenever they included it in their explanation. (10) Some people feel comfortable relating to authorities. They feel that decisions on their outcomes are somehow influenced by these authorities’ control. A study was made to see how influential this dependence on authority relations affected people’s reactions to voice procedures. The article is about the said study. It was discovered that people’s positive reactions to voice procedures are modified if the people are strongly outcome dependent. They reason that their views may not be considered by the authority, anyhow. The study also found out that the effect is the same whether expressions are stated before or after the decision. The study made 2 experiments and both methods were presented within the article. Each method, the participants, the procedure and the results & discussions were shared. Following that was the general discussion with a conclusion making up the discussion’s last paragraph. I think the good point of this article is the summary given after each experiment. The researchers devoted a whole paragraph to present the summary of each study. I think this is very helpful in understanding what the outcomes of the experiments were. As for the weak part of the article, I wonder if the general discussion would’ve been better had the writers discussed each experiment in relation to the general issue under 2 subheadings. A reading of the general discussion shows the writers going back & forth between “Experiment 1” and “Experiment 2” as they tried to relate their findings to the main topic. I feel had they done the discussions separately and just tied everything in under a Conclusion part, the article would’ve ended in a more organized way. (11) This article shows how collaboration can be affected by the stakeholders’ different frames, or conceptualizations, of the issues involved in the conflict. As an example, the article studied the conflict over Voyageurs National Park in northern Minnesota, USA where frame-based resistance hindered a success despite an 18-month mediation effort. At first, the article explained further the meaning of “framing” in collaboration. It then proceeded to explain how mediators attempt to help change these conceptualizations or “reframe” them, so to speak. The article then explained how the study was conducted & proceeded to analyze the gathered information, starting off with a historical background of the conflict and finishing with an explanation of why the mediation failed. As a conclusion, it was said that reframing wasn’t helpful in the Voyageurs National Park conflict because the stakeholders’ weren’t willing to change their perceptions of the issues. I think the strength of this article is the historical background explanation as this was the main reason the mediation failed. Such explanation helps the reader to understand why the stakeholders’ acted as they did. The weakness of this article, however, is the lack of the interview questions used in the study. I believe since interviews were done to gather information & the mediation is said to have failed because of the stakeholders’ frames then a look at the questions the stakeholders’ had answered might give readers a better understanding of how that conclusion was drawn. (12) The researchers in this article try to find out how negotiators come up with their initial offer. As they have said, this question hasn’t been answered. According to Blount et al., negotiators bring three important reference points to the bargaining table. These are reservation price, market information and aspiration. Reservation price, also known as “walk away” point, is the minimum price sellers are prepared to accept or the maximum price buyers are willing to pay. Negotiators take account the market price, even if its exact role is far from clear, in determining their initial offer. As for aspiration price, it is internal according to the article. The higher it is, the more favorable bargaining results. The researchers then pose 5 hypotheses based on these salient points and the correlation among the three. The article presents the method, the results and a discussion. It has been found that negotiators’ initial offer is mostly influenced by the other party’s BATNA, Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement. This would be the other party’s highest alternative offer. Market price only influences negotiators when the other party’s alternative is unknown. When there is no important information from the other party, only then do the negotiators take stock of their own situation. However, as the article concludes, when the negotiators become greedy, an agreement will never be reached. The strong point of this article is how important for parties the information contained here is. Since parties leave the technicalities of bargaining with their negotiators, knowing how that initial offer is reached may help parties come to an agreement. Also, since there may be cases where the negotiator becomes greedy, parties armed with the knowledge in this article, may be more responsible and objective at the bargaining table. The negative point here is the lack of clearer definitions for the salient points. Since the method of arriving at the initial offer works around these salient points, I believe it would’ve been more helpful if these points were described more or examples were given for each. (13) Unlike the other articles, this one doesn’t dwell on the mediator. It also didn’t use subjects able to see one another. Instead, the experiment is focused on the effects of the parties’ anger via SquareTrade.com, an online dispute resolution firm. It is common belief in mediation that anger is a barrier to settlement among others. This is because anger elicits an angry response from the other party. The study this article is based on hypothesized that effects of anger are not only limited to negative ones. The article concluded that although anger does bring out the same response from the other party, it doesn’t happen all the time. A positive effect of anger is seen when the other party, if vulnerable at the start of dispute, backs off at the filer’s show of hostility. The article presented & briefly discussed each hypothesis (9 of them), how they executed their experiment, the results of such, a discussion & a conclusion. The topic itself, I believe, is the strong point of this article. Anger & disputes are common words. Seeing those alone in the title would catch the interest of readers. I think everyone will be curious to know how anger does relate to disputes & the settlement of the same. The researchers also made reference to the tables & formulas they used which I think are helpful to their readers. The only problem I see here is the material they used to conduct their experiment. I wouldn’t suggest any online material for an experiment like this. I say this because anger can be downplayed or overplayed on the net. There is a going to be difference between anger felt in disputes over the net & in person. As such, I believe trying to understand the effect of anger should be done using real-life situations. (14) This article discusses the effect of power & emotion in negotiation. It explains that previous research has shown angry negotiators cause the other party to concede. The researchers predicted that low-power negotiators would be influenced by their opponent’s emotion and high-power negotiators won’t. The article starts of quoting a scenario of, I presume, a mediation which showed one negotiator who is very angry. The article then continues to discuss how emotions and power figure in negotiation; the hypotheses of the study & an overview of such; a detailed description of the 4 studies made, and a general discussion with the last paragraph being the conclusion. Emotion has been focused on in the past but in relation to the effect on the negotiator’s person. In this research, it focuses on the emotion of their counterparts. Power on the other hand is the ability to affect influence on other people. In the studies, power was manipulated but each still had an influence on the negotiator’s dependence level on the other party. In conclusion, the studies resulted in the low-powered negotiators conceding largely to angry opponents. The high-powered ones were not affected and their concessions were small, if any. I think the weakness of the article is the lack of summarization at the end of each study they made. Since the results for each study contained figures & charts, I believe a paragraph summarizing each discussion of study at the end of each study would aid in a better understanding of the results. As for its strength, it is good they decided to include an overview of the studies they were going to do. Again, seeing they were going to do 5 studies, the overview gave readers an idea of what to expect. (15) As per this article, there are 3 important outcomes from a dispute resolution: how frequent disputes are settled voluntarily, the value of the settlements achieved, and the speed settlements are reached. It also states that the 2 best-known procedures involving a third party as facilitator is mediation & arbitration. There is mediation when the 3rd party aids in reaching a settlement and an arbitration wherein the 3rd party decides on the binding settlement after evidence is presented. This article was written to test if arbitration before mediation, rather than the commonly practiced mediation prior to arbitration, does indeed yield more significant results in two of the three outcomes of a successful dispute resolution. The experiment posed 8 hypotheses and continued to give a detailed explanation of the experiment done followed by presentation of the results and a discussion/conclusion. Unlike other articles, this one provided the formulas used to get numerical data. Moreover, the writers drew the readers to the figure (Table 1) provided whenever they referred to said data. I think this thoughtfulness is the article’s strength. Readers will appreciate the information in this article because it’s written very simply. As for its weakness, I think it would have been better if the article didn’t discuss the 2 hybrids of procedures with the 3 dyadic structures (groups, individuals, individual-group). Giving the topics their own articles each would allow for more discussions & evaluations. (16) In this article, a study was made to learn how the relationship between negotiators can either result to a mutually beneficial settlement or a trade-off that could’ve been better had the negotiators focused less on the parties’ relationship. For the experiment, observers were asked to watch videotapes of 2 groups of negotiators – one having a positive relationship and the other having a bad one. The observers were then asked to suggest a settlement. The result of the experiment showed that observers were inclined to overlook common interests between the parties in a negative relationship. The settlement they suggested therefore weren’t really as beneficial as those recommended to the group in a positive relationship. Whether the quality of relationship was staged or genuine didn’t make a difference in the suggestions. The authors claim there are two kinds of processing in making perceptions: heuristic, where processing is automatic & systematic, where it is deliberate and controlled. The authors conclude that the observers’ spontaneous judgment is heuristic. As a conclusion, the authors made their recommendations on how mediators should approach the negotiation table. According to the writers, mediators should be aware of the personal relationship between parties. They should also refrain from making any comments regarding the parties’ true feelings toward each other if the mediators perceive an ill relationship between the parties. Lastly, and personally I think the most importantly, mediators should focus on the issues more than the characters of the parties. Similar to other articles dealing with experiments, this one presented the method done, the results and a discussion. A weakness of this article is its lengthy introduction & results page. It made reading a headache. I wonder if these, especially the results, could’ve been interpreted in a more concise way. Its strength though is the writer’s inclusion of how the study can be useful in actual mediation. As it says, they don’t recommend it as the only type of training for mediators but their suggestions may certainly help in arriving at satisfactory settlements. (17) A study was done on subjects from the USA and Turkey to see if they would prefer to communicate directly or through a third-party. It also tested if gender would play a role where a third-party was the choice. Results showed that student-subjects from Turkey preferred an intermediary with the female subjects showing more reliance. This dependence remained even if the subjects’ gains, were they to cooperate, would be higher than the other party’s. This article is about that study. The article starts off with an abstract and then an introduction on the culture and third parties involved in conflict management. It makes references to theories, historical background and even gives a situation as an example of conflict management in non-Western cultures. It then presented the 2 hypotheses to be answered with a description of each. Following that was the method, the results and a discussion. In the discussion it was stated that indeed in a collective cultural environment, a third party is preferred. It also stated that the higher reliance of women on intermediaries is consistent with the role of women in a traditional society such as Turkey. I think the strong point of this article is how relevant this topic is in the world today where marriages and business mergers cross cultural boundaries. This information will be helpful if there is a need for mediation in these relationships. The weak point I see in this article is how lengthy the introduction and discussion parts are. Upon reading them, I know they can be made more concise. Even if the topic is appealing to readers, I think the length of the introduction might turn them off. It almost did so with me. (18) This article is about a study made to find out what factors affect people’s choice of procedure in resolving a conflict & what steps do they take in making that decision. The article starts of with a scenario as its introduction. As with other articles that talk about an experiment or study, this presented the method used in doing the research, the results and a general discussion. It also contained tables and several subheadings for each main part of the writing. In conclusion, the article says that based on the research done there is strong evidence which shows procedural preferences are based on perceptions of the opponent’s personality. The research also showed that people think the source of their opponent’s behavior is traits. These perceptions, on the other hand, are influenced by cultural theories. The research doesn’t stop at the general discussion but continues with other related topics such as questions for future research, among others. I think the strength of this article is the example it used in its introduction. The scenario is the gist of the article. It quickly puts the reader in the right frame of mind for the proceeding information. The weakness of the article is the Results part, I think. I wonder if it’s possible to answer the two questions without all the variations the researchers made during the experiment. The length of all the explanations is both confusing and daunting, I believe, for average readers who may just be interested in finding out the answers to those two questions. (19) With everything else in the world being affected by technology, dispute resolutions are not exceptions. Although many traditional lawyers have looked down on alternative dispute resolution methods, because of the widespread use of the Internet, there is a need to adjust and adapt to on-line dispute resolution or ODR. The article introduces ODR and how it came to be. It also discussed the assumptions on the discomfort of using ODR. One is that physical presence in dispute resolutions is still superior to those mediated by other means. Another is that ODR is only applicable to disputes on-line and not in family or other interpersonal disputes. A third assumption is that ODR is just text-based. There are legal risks, too, the article admits such as confidentiality, privacy and security of on-line communication. However, since the common goal of all negotiators is a settlement beneficial for all the parties, the article suggests that use of ODR depends on the communication channel used in the resolution. It may be face-to-face (the traditional way) or on-line or mixed, etc. The article continues to discuss the recommendations of the National Alternative Dispute Resolution Advisory Council (NADRAC) in the practice of ODR. Moreover, the article shows a table comparing the different media used for dispute resolutions, their benefits, limitations & tasks. As a conclusion, the article suggests that ADR users need to adjust to the advanced forms of technology as their clients’ needs may change, too. In my opinion, the strength of this article is the comparison table. It summed up what the article was about. A weak point of the article though is the conclusion. Maybe it is the way Table 2 was written as a final paragraph. I just didn’t see it as the unifying paragraph of the whole piece which is what the last paragraph of the conclusion should be. It made the article sound un-“concluded.” (20) It is said that mediation plays a major role in the resolving disputes. Mediation offers the disputants a more peaceful way of ending a dispute than litigation. According to the article, while litigation fights for the disputants’ rights, mediation focuses on satisfying the disputants’ needs. However, this needs-based orientation of mediation is not free of problems, the article continues. The study the article is based on addresses the notion of need satisfaction as the point where mediation is deemed a success. The article is divided into 3 parts. The first talks about how mediation makes a trade-off between rights and needs. Part two states that needs are subjective and that minorities may identify their needs as minimal when compared to “White” counterparts. Part three then discusses how valid it is making need satisfaction the benchmark of an effective mediation when needs may be prejudiced if the disputant isn’t properly aware of her full rights. In conclusion, the article claims that need satisfaction must balanced against the possible harms it may bring. It should be remembered that needs are affected by life experiences. Mediators must ensure that, if disputants of members of the minority, the disputants’ full rights are explained to them. I think the strength of this article is the valuable information it brings to society. The examples it incorporated in its explanations aid in the realization that indeed the need-based orientation of mediation is problematic, especially for the minority. It can be abused. The weakness of this article, I think, are the numerous footnotes it contains. It makes the reader think that the author’s own thoughts & interpretations in this piece are very minimal. Read More