Growth of the Field (Challenges, New Sectors, etc.)

This week the South China Morning Post featured an article entitled “Why the theories of Einstein, climate change or evolution can never be proved right”.   Referring to recent world headlines that…

"You cannot direct a living system; you can only disturb it"1 When mediators join a conflict, they enter a living system. Realise it or not, that system is instantly changed by their arrival. …

In 1861, the then Secretary to the Education Department, Robert Lowe, addressed the UK House of Commons on the pressing matter of elementary education, in particular on the linked questions of access…

Last week I spent some time with a European mediation organisation looking to review its mediator accreditation and practice standards. Somehow I expected a discussion about various accreditation…

“Patients don’t expect doctors to be perfect. They do expect them to strive for perfection by opening up their work to scrutiny” Atul Gawande, Desert Island Discs, BBC Radio 4, 6/12/15. A bit of a…

This comment has its origins in two events, separated by distance and utterly different in origin and impact, yet still linked by a common theme. This is also a partial continuation of the…

Mediation Awareness Week in Ireland! 19th -23rd October 2015 In most jurisdictions, when people find themselves dispute, they think “I’ll phone my lawyer”. This is certainly the case in Ireland. When…

In 2006 Frank Sander produced his 'Mediation Receptivity Index'(22 Ohio State Journal on Dispute Resolution, 599-618). The MRI would be a way of discerning the extent of 'mainstreaming' or …

Not that the ADR is a boring milieu, but given the time of the year and the number of official and unofficial holidays the dispute resolution practitioners are taking right now, I have decided to…