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R & D Overview

CONVENOR specializes in some of the more difficult problems in conflict management. We focus primarily on issues which affect conflict handling and adult education systems on a large scale.

We are particularly known for our work on the gaps between theory and practice and between different specialties, issues related to mediators' ethics and qualifications, and organizations' widespread failure to plan ahead for inevitable disputes. We draw on decades of real-world experience as practicing neutrals in thousands of disputes, as well as a record of original thinking and writing which is second to none in our field.

Our consulting practice focuses on

•  Designing new projects for day-to-day management by other organizations

•  Anticipating conflict in time to avert it

•  Designing better ways to manage conflict, when it's unavoidable

•  Reducing the costs of conflict

•  Team-building and evaluation.

Our training practice focuses on

•  New topics that are not yet widely taught

•  Master classes and other events for professionals who already have significant experience in conflict management. (Several of our colleagues, however, also conduct frequent courses for more "regular" students, as part of their other affiliations.)

Rethinking how negotiation is taught
CONVENOR's Chris Honeyman is co-director, with James Coben and Sharon Press of Hamline University School of Law and other partners, of a major project to revamp the teaching of negotiation (and to a significant extent, mediation) worldwide. More than 60 invited scholars, along with a few practitioners with very significant experience, joined the project's Rome (2008) and Istanbul (2009) meetings. Results to date include two books, Rethinking Negotiation Teaching, edited by Christopher Honeyman, James Coben and Giuseppe De Palo (DRI Press 2009) and Venturing Beyond the Classroom, with the same editors (DRI Press 2010.) A full special issue of Harvard's Negotiation Journal was published on the same theme and with the same guest editors (April 2009; see Intro article.) A third book is expected following the project's final meeting, in Beijing in May 2011.

Not just for "advanced" courses
In a 2007 Negotiation Journal article, Chris Honeyman described a supposedly "simple" negotiation — and why it illuminated the need for a complete rethinking of the "basic" courses in negotiation now taught all over the world. The article was instrumental in forming the Rethinking Negotiation Teaching project.

Helping clients to think ahead
Why do otherwise competent organizations and people so consistently fail to plan ahead to avert conflict? Can anything be done about it? See our team's article in Alternatives. This article has been instrumental in developing a new World Bank Group Toolkit for preventing, not just resolving, disputes in corporate governance worldwide.

The most comprehensive reference
The Negotiator's Fieldbook is a major book by CONVENOR's partners and many colleagues. It's described by the American Bar Association as the foremost reference work in the field. Numerous reviewers have used similar terms.

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