2: Bridging the gap between legal and psychological perspectives

Description

It can be argued that psychologists and lawyers have been the two most influential professional bodies in the development of the new doctrines of conflict resolution. Yet the sense of mutual discovery between these important sources of new ideas is smaller than it might be: Not many law teachers, let alone practicing lawyers, are familiar with the past twenty years’ discoveries in psychology, while psychologists are not often found pursuing their researches in the case environments which lawyers treat as the only reliable sources of wisdom. One consequence is that new lawyers often continue to be trained without much in the way of understanding of what motivates people engaged in conflict—i.e. their clients. Another consequence is that working lawyers continue to ignore or distrust new knowledge produced by methods they see as arid and removed from "reality" as they understand it.

Some joint law-psychology teams, however, are now in existence. One example is Clark Freshman and Adele Hayes; starting with the background of research on psychology and business students (when in better moods, such students negotiate more cooperatively, reach more win-win agreements, and do no worse for themselves), their recent research explores the limits of the previous research, including whether it establishes that mood would have a similar effect on how lawyers negotiate. This session will begin with a brief summary of Freshman’s and Hayes’ research, as a basis for a discussion of how and why the gap between lawyers’ and psychologists’ typical perspectives might profitably be approached. Among the questions we expect to address are: Is it fair to capsulize orientations as "lawyers tend to work backward from cases; psychologists have more faith in rigorously controlled laboratory experimentation"? What effects does this contrast of methods have on collaboration? And: What can be done about the gap?

The panel:

Susan Brodt

Clark Freshman (chair)

Scott Peppet

Jeffrey Polzer

Kathleen Valley

Susan Brodt

Susan Brodt is an Associate Professor at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business. She received her BA from the University of California, Berkeley, and her MS in Statistics and Ph.D. in Psychology from Stanford University. Prior to joining the Fuqua faculty in 1994, she taught at the University of Virginia's Darden Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, and the Claremont Colleges. During the 1997-98 academic year, she returned to Stanford as a visiting scholar.

Brodt has taught graduate business courses on negotiation, managerial effectiveness, conflict and cooperation, and business in Latin America, and doctoral seminars on managerial trust and research on negotiation. Brodt's research focuses on negotiation and business relationships. She researches cognitive and social psychological barriers to effective management including impediments to rational decision behavior and negotiation. Most recently, she has researched the dynamics of negotiating teams, including cross-cultural teams, and its effects on inter-group relations and negotiation.

Clark Freshman

Clark Freshman is Associate Professor of Law at the University of Miami. He specializes in dispute resolution (including both civil procedure and alternative dispute resolution) and civil rights. Professor Freshman studied history and government at Harvard College (B.A., 1986), philosophy, politics, and economics at University College, Oxford University (B.A., 1988), where he was a Marshall Scholar, and studied law at Stanford Law School (J.D., 1991). After law school, he clerked for Judge William Norris of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He then served as associate independent counsel for the United States under Joseph diGenova in the investigation of the search of President Clinton's passport files (1991-93). In addition, he was an associate at Manatt, Phelps, and Phillips in Los Angeles, California. While at Manatt, he specialized in appellate litigation and resolution of disputes (through litigation and otherwise) involving several prominent entertainment groups, including several nationally known music artists.

Scott Peppet

Scott Peppet is an Associate Professor at the University of Colorado School of Law, teaching contracts, professional responsibility, and negotiation. Previously, he taught negotiation at Harvard Law School for several years. His writings include co-authoring a new book on legal negotiations, titled Beyond Winning: Creating Value in Negotiating Deals and Disputes (Harvard University Press, 2000), which is currently the primary text for Harvard Law School's Negotiation Workshop. He is a graduate of Cornell University and Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review and the co-founder and co-editor-in-chief of the Harvard Negotiation Law Review.

Jeffrey Polzer

Jeff Polzer is an Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior at Harvard Business School. His research explores how group affiliations affect individuals' decisions, perceptions, and social interactions, especially in diverse work teams. He is particularly interested in the causes and consequences of conflict within and between groups. His current research investigates these issues in the founding teams of start-up businesses.

Kathleen Valley

Kathleen Valley teaches negotiation, decision making, and power and influence courses in Harvard Business School’s MBA program, as well as doctoral courses on social behavior in organizations. Valley is also an instructor in Harvard Law School's Program on Negotiation executive courses. Valley's research focuses on social context and its effects on negotiation, decision making, and organizational change.

 #3A: Challenging conflict resolution’s teaching and training models

Description

Conflict resolution teaching is now a good-sized field, for both students (at every level) and adults. But a widespread failure of the teaching, training and continuing education system to keep practitioners "up with" important research discoveries is now well established, even when these discoveries clearly ought to affect practice. This raises fundamental questions about the effectiveness of the teaching and training models we are using. The panelists in this symposium include the principal organizers for an innovative conference being held in May, 2002 to invite reconsideration of the strengths and weaknesses of our models, by explicitly comparing them with teaching and training models used in other fields that need to train people to do difficult things, such as the arts, architecture, medicine and advanced technology. The session will examine the preliminary outputs of that meeting. Questions we intend to ask include: Are there any "in a nutshell" discoveries from this discussion? Do such structures effectively explore and challenge our assumptions about creating educational experiences? And do they lead to effective new commitments to educational change, to the formation of cross-disciplinary research teams, and to researcher-practitioner collaborations?

The panel

Christopher Honeyman (chair)

Scott Hughes

David Levin

Roy Lewicki

Andrea Schneider

Eben Weitzman

Bios

Christopher Honeyman

Chris Honeyman is principal investigator of "Theory to Practice," a major Hewlett Foundation-funded effort to help ADR practitioners and scholars communicate better. Honeyman, a full-time neutral since 1978, is president of Convenor Dispute Resolution Consulting in Madison, Wis. He has served as a consultant to numerous dispute resolution programs throughout the country, and his writings on dispute resolution ethics, quality control and finance have been widely cited.

Scott Hughes

Scott Hughes is Assistant Professor of Law at the University of New Mexico School of Law. He is a member of the Executive Council of the Dispute Resolution Section of the ABA and is the Chair of the Education Committee. Prior to coming to the University of New Mexico School of Law, he was Assistant Professor and Director of Clinical Legal Education at the University of Alabama School of Law.

David Levin

David Levin is a full-time practicing mediator based in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Roy J. Lewicki

Dr. Lewicki is the Dean's Distinguished Teaching Professor and professor of Management and Human Resources at the Max M. Fisher College of Business, at The Ohio State University. Professor Lewicki maintains research and teaching interests in the fields of negotiation and dispute resolution, managerial leadership, organizational justice, and ethical decision making. He is the author or editor of twenty-four books, numerous articles, and teaching materials. He was program co-chair (1998), president-elect (1999) and president (2000) of the International Association of Conflict Management, and is a trustee of the Columbus Council for Ethics in Economics.

Andrea Schneider

Andrea Schneider is Associate Professor of Law at Marquette University, where she teaches negotiation and international law courses. She was previously an associate in a major Washington, D.C., law firm, where she specialized in international corporate transactions. She has co-authored two books, Beyond Machiavelli: Tools for Coping with Conflict and Coping with International Conflict, and is sole author of Creating the Musee d'Orsay: The Politics of Culture in France. Her articles have been published in Negotiation Journal, Law and Policy in International Business, and Harvard International Law Journal.

Eben Weitzman

Eben Weitzman is Associate Professor in the Graduate Programs in Dispute Resolution, University of Massachusetts, Boston. He is a social and organizational psychologist specializing in the study of conflict. His work focuses on conflict within and between groups, with emphases on organizational conflict, cross-cultural conflict, and intergroup relations. He does conflict resolution and organizational development work with a wide variety of organizations in both the public and private sectors, including organizations in education, government, law enforcement, social services, business, and the courts. His research interests include intra-group conflict in mediation; cross-cultural conflict on campus; cultural differences in attitudes toward conflict; effects of cooperation and competition on small group processes; and computer-aided data analysis in qualitative research. He is Reviews Editor for the journal Field Methods.

#3B: Case study of an interdisciplinary program (postponed to 2003; included here to show balance intended)

Most academic conflict resolution teaching and research takes place within the context of traditional departments—such as law, business and other professional schools. The contrasts between these departments’ approaches to teaching and research in conflict resolution are as large as the similarities, but each has gained a place within a recognizable tradition. Yet a few explicitly interdisciplinary programs now exist, raising the twin possibilities of a challenge to traditional departments’ "ownership" of the subject, and a challenge to the new programs to develop scholarly standards and traditions of their own, without the anchor of many years of development within a defined "discipline."

This session will be a candid self- (and external) examination of one of the oldest-established and largest programs of this kind, the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution (ICAR) at George Mason University.

• ^{What happens to conflict resolution as a "subject" in these environments?}
• ^{How can a comprehensive (in both breadth and depth) conflict analysis and resolution program be developed for graduate students?}
• ^{What are the predominant paradigms or models for teaching?}
• ^{What kinds of differences should we acknowledge between doctoral- and masters-level students?}
• ^{What is the balance between research, theory and practice?}
• ^{How should decisions be made as to who belongs on the faculty?}

Panel:

Sandra Cheldelin

Sara Cobb (chair)

Daniel Druckman

Michelle LeBaron

Robert Rubinstein

Wallace Warfield

Sandra Cheldelin

Sandra Cheldelin is Associate Professor at the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University. She has served as chief administrator and on the faculties at several colleges and universities. A licensed psychologist and expert in organizational behavior and conflict, she has consulted to more than one hundred fifty organizations and corporations. She is a frequent lecturer on workplace conflict, violence and intentional change. She has published chapters and articles on conflict and conflict resolution.

Sara Cobb

Sara Cobb is Director of the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution (ICAR) at George Mason University. In her role as Director, she contributes to program development both within ICAR, as well as between ICAR and other organizations, public and private. As a faculty, she teaches courses in narrative research methods, and systemic intervention design. Dr. Cobb has a Ph.D. in Communication from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Through her research, she has specialized in the analysis of conflict narratives and has contributed to the critique of "neutrality" in conflict resolution processes. Dr. Cobb has published widely in communication studies and legal studies; she has held both administrative and academic positions at a variety of research institutions; and she has consulted to a host of organizations, using appreciative inquiry and systemic interventions. The blend of academic research, program development and practice enables Dr. Cobb to offer both systematic critique of traditional methods for conflict intervention, as well as new methods for intervention that focus on the transformation of narratives in conflict processes.

Daniel Druckman

Daniel Druckman holds the Vernon M. and Minnie I. Lynch Chair of Conflict Resolution at George Mason University. He has published widely on such topics as negotiation, nationalism, political stability, group processes, nonverbal communication, and modeling methodologies, including simulation. He is the co-editor of the recently published book, "International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War," published by the National Academy Press.

Michelle LeBaron

Michelle LeBaron is Professor of Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University. For the past two decades, she has researched and practiced in the areas of intercultural, family and public policy conflict resolution. Michelle is the author of numerous publications on training and teaching effectiveness and cultural dimensions of conflict. She is passionate about using art and creative approaches to explore conflict terrain, and has done groundbreaking work in this area. Her new book, Bridging Troubled Waters, Conflict Resolution from the Heart will be released by Jossey Bass in July 2002.

Robert Rubinstein

Robert A. Rubinstein, professor of anthropology and international relations at Syracuse University and director of the Program on the Analysis and Resolution of Conflicts at its Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, is a specialist in political and medical anthropology, cross-cultural negotiations, international security and conflict resolution, and international health and development. He is the author of Science as Cognitive Process: Toward an Empirical Philosophy of Science (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984) and editor of Peace and War: Cross-Cultural Perspectives (Transaction Books, 1986). Rubinstein also is the author of more than 50 journal articles, book chapters and reviews. He is co-chair of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences’ Commission on the Study of Peace, a global organization of professionals studying peace and international security.

Wallace Warfield

Wallace Warfield is an Associate Professor at the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, George Mason University. In this capacity, he teaches clinical and theory courses and is Co-Director of Practicum Education. As a consultant, Warfield has done work in community, inter ethnic, and organizational conflict in the U.S. and other countries. He is the author of several articles and book chapters on conflict and conflict resolution.

 5A: Technology in dispute resolution education and practice

Many of us are making increasing use of technology, especially Internet-based communication, in our conflict resolution related teaching, practice, and research. But do we really know what effect the medium has on our communication? On our effectiveness? How many of us are old enough to remember Marshall McLuhan’s argument that "the medium is the message"? Is there some truth to this statement? To what extent does it apply to e-mail, the web, and conflict resolution education, practice, and research?

This symposium will explore the central questions with audience members and a panel of participants, who have wide-ranging expertise on the use of and the effects of technology on conflict resolution-related communication. The panelists will each speak briefly about their own work and their thoughts about the impact of the Internet on what we do and how we do it, and then we will involve the audience in a discussion of the following topics:

• ^{How does technology affect conflict resolution teaching, practice, and research?}
• ^{How do online training programs compare to traditional face-to-face programs?}
• ^{Are there some things they can do better? Worse?}
• ^{How can the two approaches be combined to get the most of each?}
• ^{What about online intervention (online mediation or arbitration, for example)?}
• ^{How does that compare to face-to face processes?}
• ^{Are the same patterns evident in direct (non-mediated) electronic negotiations?}
• ^{Can technology be used to improve research, decision-making, planning, or other group work? What effects does it have on group performance and conflict resolution?}
• ^{How does cultural background affect the answers to these questions?}
• ^{What further changes are likely to take place in the next decade to change the way technology is used in the disputing environment?}

Zoe Barsness

Anita D. Bhappu

Guy Burgess (chair)

Ethan Katsh

Zoe Barsness

Zoe Barsness is Assistant Professor at the University of Washington, Tacoma where she is a member of the Business Administration Program. She holds a M.S. and Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University. She has an A.B. degree from Harvard University where she majored in Comparative History with a specialization in East Asian, European Intellectual, and U.S. history.

Dr. Barsness’s research primarily focuses on negotiation, alternative work arrangements, and the impact of technology in the workplace. Recent research projects have examined cross-cultural negotiation processes and the impact of alternative work arrangements such as the use of telecommuting, and virtual teams on group processes and effectiveness. She is currently working on several projects examining the influence of technologically mediated communication on negotiation, the strategies adopted by individuals to manage their workplace performance more effectively, and the use of teams in high performance work organizations.

Anita D. Bhappu

Anita D. Bhappu is an Assistant Professor of Management and Organizations in the Cox School of Business and a Faculty Affiliate of the Hart eCenter at Southern Methodist University. She received her Ph.D. in Management from the University of Arizona. She studies how the interactions and outcomes of diverse work teams are affected by communication technologies, such as email and group decision support systems. One of the topics she is currently investigating is the effect of e-communication on power relations--do people relate to each other differently online than they do face-to-face? Her research is published in the Academy of Management Review, Journal of Applied Psychology, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, and Work and Occupations. Prior to her academic career, Dr. Bhappu worked as a chemical engineer for the Procter & Gamble Company.

Guy Burgess (Session Co-ordinator)

Dr. Guy Burgess is a founder and Co-Director (with Heidi Burgess) of the University of Colorado Conflict Research Consortium. He holds a Ph.D. in Sociology and has been working in the conflict resolution field, as a scholar and a practitioner, since 1979. His primary interests involve the study and management of intractable conflicts, conflict framing, environmental conflict resolution, and the dissemination of conflict resolution knowledge over the Internet. He is Co-Director of three major Internet-based conflict resolution projects:

a. CRInfo, the Conflict Resolution Information Source, a comprehensive online catalog of more that 10,000 conflict resolution resources (www.crinfo.org);

b. The Intractable Conflict Knowledge Base, a new project which is assembling for free distribution on the Web the field’s cumulative knowledge on strategies for dealing with intractable conflict (www.intractableconflict.org); and

c. The Conflict Research Consortium, which operates one of the oldest and largest conflict resolution sites (conflict.colorado.edu).

Dr. Burgess has edited and authored a number of books and articles, the most recent being The Encyclopedia of Conflict Resolution (with Heidi Burgess, ABC-Clio, 1999)

Ethan Katsh

Dr. Katsh is Professor of Legal Studies at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and Co-Director of the Center for Information Technology and Dispute Resolution. He is a graduate of the Yale Law School and the author of two books on law and technology, Law in a Digital World (Oxford University Press, 1995) and The Electronic Media and the Transformation of Law (Oxford University Press, 1989), as well as many articles. During the last ten years, he has been involved in many projects involving the application of technology to law and legal processes. His new book, Online Dispute Resolution: Conflict Resolution in Cyberspace (co-authored with Janet Rifkin), has recently been published by Jossey-Bass.

 #5B: Intractable conflicts: the frontier of the conflict resolution field

Although difficult, protracted conflicts are nothing new, the potentially catastrophic nature of such "intractable" conflicts was made especially clear to Americans on September 11, 2001. In the aftermath of the attacks, the immediate focus has been upon military operations in Afghanistan and aggressive security measures at home. Now, as the war in Afghanistan winds down and the enormous difficulty of implementing effective security measures becomes apparent, it is becoming increasingly clear that we need to devote more attention to the development of strategies for more constructively dealing with the many intractable conflicts that divide Western and Middle Eastern societies. We also need to remember that the problem of intractability plagues many other parts of the world--Northern Ireland, the Balkans, and Southern Africa, for example. It is also a domestic issue as well, with numerous social and political problems involving divisive issues such as race relations, abortion, and homosexual rights.

With the current international focus on high-tech military and security systems, there is a widespread image that the peace and conflict resolution fields have little to offer in today’s dangerous world. To counter this incorrect assumption, those of us working in the field have two obligations. First, we need to honestly consider which, of the field’s many insights, are capable of making a significant contribution to the handling of dangerous and intractable conflict situations. Next, we need to find better ways to convey these insights to the larger society. This IACM session we will address questions such as:

1) How do we determine when a conflict is intractable?

2) What can be done to decrease the destructiveness of these conflicts (even when resolution is not possible)?

3) How can intractable conflicts, or subsidiary disputes, be transformed in ways which make them more amenable to resolution?

4) What general principles apply to all types of intractable conflict?

5) What principles and intervention strategies are unique to particular conflict contexts and circumstances?

The proposed IACM panel is composed of four individuals with experience in the analysis of intractable conflict problems. Three panel members (Heidi Burgess, Sanda Kaufman and Bernard Mayer) will discuss their work on a new project, The Intractable Conflict Knowledge Base (ICKB) Project. This project, funded by the Hewlett Foundation, is a collaborative effort involving approximately 50 leading scholars and practitioners. Its purpose is to compile, on the Web, an online, state-of-the-art reference on the theory of intractable conflict and the practice of intractable conflict management. The project somewhat parallels the Deutsch/Coleman Handbook of Conflict Resolution and the Susskind, McKearnan, and Thomas-Larmer Consensus Building Handbook. But, instead of producing a thick, expensive book that will be primarily sold to libraries, ICKB will post its work on the Web--making it easily and freely accessible to disputants, third parties, students, and scholars worldwide. We also plan a series of follow-up activities which will develop ways of incorporating the online knowledge base into the field's teaching, training, research and theory-building efforts.

Although we will only be nine months into this two-year project by the time of the IACM conference, we will already have compiled a massive list of knowledge base "building blocks" outlining the field’s key insights into the causes and dynamics of intractable conflicts and the nature of available intervention strategies. We will also be able to report on the results of a March 2002 knowledge base design conference in which the project team will collectively and systematically map the field’s knowledge on this important topic. Also contributing to the panel will be insights gained by Drs. Lewicki and Burgess from their participation in a previous project which examined the Framing of Intractable Environmental Disputes.

The fourth member of the team, Richard Reuben, is a lawyer, mediator, and a journalist. He will report on the examination that he has been doing of the role of the media in intractable conflicts. Since the media largely determines the way in which people frame problems and the images that they develop of themselves and their opponents (often referred to as "the enemy"), the media can do much to exacerbate or ameliorate a conflict. Richard will discuss his findings regarding a variety of intractable (or at least very difficult) public conflicts.

While the panel members will spend a short time describing these projects and their progress to date, much of the session will be spent in discussion. We want to draw the audience into a discussion of ways in which our field can better deal with intractable conflicts and how we can move the field forward into that frontier.

The Panel:

Heidi Burgess (chair)

Sanda Kaufman

Bernard Mayer

Richard Reuben

Bios:

Heidi Burgess

Co-Director

Conflict Research Consortium

and the Intractable Conflict Knowledge Base Project

University of Colorado

UCB 580

Boulder, CO 80309-0580

Dr. Burgess is a Founder and Co-Director (with Guy Burgess) of the University of Colorado Conflict Research Consortium. She holds a Ph.D. in Sociology and has been working in the conflict resolution field, as a scholar and a practitioner, since 1979. Her primary interests involve the study and management of intractable conflicts, public policy dispute resolution, and the dissemination of conflict resolution knowledge over the Internet. She Co-Directs the project described in this symposium (the Intractable Conflict Knowledge Base Project) and is one of the primary authors and creators of the Online Training Program on Intractable Conflicts, a "precursor" to ICKB. She is also the Co-Director of the CRInfo Project – the Conflict Resolution Information Source (http://www.crinfo.org) <(http://www.crinfo.org)?and> – an online conflict resolution clearinghouse. Dr. Burgess has edited and authored a number of books and articles, the most recent being The Encyclopedia of Conflict Resolution (with Guy Burgess, ABC-Clio 1999).

Sanda Kaufman

Sanda Kaufman is Professor of Planning and Public Administration at the Levin College of Urban Affairs, Cleveland State University. She holds degrees in Public Policy Analysis (Ph. D., Carnegie Mellon's Heinz School of Public Policy and Management, 1985), Architecture and City and Regional Planning (B. Arch. 1975 and M.S.1977, Technion, Israel Institute of Technology). At the Levin College she teaches courses in quantitative reasoning, conflict management and strategic planning. Kaufman engages in research, practice, and evaluation of conflict management and third party intervention in public, organizational, environmental, and school disputes. For the past two years she has been a member of a multi-university research consortium funded by the Hewlett foundation to explore the role of framing in intractable environmental disputes. Her articles have been published in the Journal of Conflict Resolution, the Negotiation Journal, the International Journal for Conflict Management, Fractals, the Journal of Planning, Education and Research (JPER) and the Journal of Architecture Planning and Research.

Bernard Mayer

Bernie Mayer is Managing Partner in CDR Associates (Boulder, CO), one of the longest-established and best-respected conflict resolution firms. Trained originally as a psychotherapist, Mayer has worked as a mediator in a variety of settings generally characterized as intractable, both in the U.S. and in a number of other countries. He is the author of the "Practice Standards for Social Work Mediators" that were adopted by the National Association of Social Workers. His book The Dynamics of Conflict Resolution: A Practitioner’s Guide was published in 2000 by Jossey Bass.

Richard Reuben

Associate Professor of Law

308 Hulston Hall

Columbia, MO 65211-4190

(573)884-5204

ReubenR@missouri.edu

Professor Reuben joined the faculty of Law at the University of Missouri in 2000. Before that, he was a Hewlett Senior Research Fellow at the Harvard Negotiation Research Project at Harvard Law School, and a Reporter for the Uniform Mediation Law Project of the American Bar Association and the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws. A lawyer and journalist, Professor Reuben has been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court and other legal matters, and is currently the Editor of Dispute Resolution Magazine, a quarterly publication of the American Bar Association. He has served for two years as the Associate Director of the Stanford Center for Conflict and Negotiation at Stanford University. He also serves on several professional working groups, including efforts directed at furthering the use of consensual dispute resolution methods in state administrative agencies, and establishing an information infrastructure for the dispute resolution industry. He has taught Negotiation at Harvard Law School, Alternative Dispute Resolution Law and Policy at Stanford Law School, and Conflict Theory at Hamline Law School. He teaches Administrative Law, Negotiation, and other dispute resolution related topics.