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Theory vs. Practice in Dispute Resolution Christopher Honeyman This article was first published in the July-August 1997 issue of Alternatives to the High Cost of Litigation. The past twenty years have seen an astonishing outpouring of new ideas about conflict and how to resolve it. The same period has seen an array of new practitioners go to work, in many different ways. Unfortunately, these two trends don't match up as well as the casual observer might think. Many practitioners of conflict resolution tend to dismiss the contributions of theorists, particularly ideas which challenge their own opinions or methods. In fact, there is some evidence that the only people consistently reading new material thoroughly are students. But if, as I believe, this new knowledge could significantly affect many people's ability to resolve their disputes in better ways, relying primarily on formal teaching of enrolled students is grossly inefficient. This implies that some twenty years will elapse before those students arrive at positions of authority. By then, they will be operating on theories that have since been significantly developed, or become entirely obsolete. At the same time, research designs often seem not to take into account the things practitioners and policy-makers want or need to know. This article will briefly describe some steps now being taken to address these issues. A discussion of "what to do" began in the context of the eighteen, mostly university-based, programs known as the Hewlett Theory Centers. In 1994-95 Hofstra Law School professor Robert Baruch Bush was retained by the Hewlett Foundation as a consultant, to evaluate the centers' first ten years. During roughly the same period, I also was a consultant to Hewlett, looking into the financing of the dispute resolution field. From these different starting points Bush and I converged on at least one conclusion in common: Most practitioners (however defined) were getting on with their practices little affected by all the thinking that, on paper, had produced some remarkable insights. Meanwhile, some of the research seemed a bit disconnected from the realities and constraints of practice. The theory centers hold an annual meeting. A discussion at the January 1996 meeting posited a rough division between three groups of practitioners. One comprised those willing to engage in research and theoretical discussion in detail. It was generally agreed that this currently is a very small group. The second consisted of those who are willing to buy, read or sit and listen to researchers' products; this group was viewed as correlating with Baruch Bush's calculation of those affected by the theory centers to date—about 65,000 people. The third group included, more or less, everybody else who engages in some form of conflict resolution at work or as a vocation. Depending on the definition used(1) this group could total in the millions. And this disproportionately large group controls most of society's actions and resources. Clearly here lay a challenge to broaden both the dissemination of the theorists' conclusions—and theorists' responsiveness to practitioners' experience and perceptions. The discussion which began at that meeting has now developed considerably. One result is that the Hewlett Foundation agreed in April to fund a fairly ambitious proposal from the Minneapolis-based Mediation Center, on which I will serve as principal investigator. This project will involve two years' work, first investigative, then developmental. The purpose is to maximize the use of existing means of dissemination of information and of dialogue between scholars and practitioners of dispute resolution, and, if possible, to develop a few new avenues of communication. Better ApproachesGiven the numbers and dispersal of "practitioners" of dispute resolution (using the broader definitions) throughout society, my colleagues and I felt that finding better approaches to ways of getting new information "out of the lab" might best be centered on existing mechanisms routinely accessed and used by the public at large—such as CLE and CEU courses, professional conferences and certain parts of the press. The following bulleted paragraphs are some of the potential solutions which the project will consider and attempt to encourage.
A two-way streetProblems of dissemination don't by themselves explain the lack of enthusiasm many practitioners have displayed toward academics. If the areas of interest of, and language used in, the scholarly community appear unresponsive to practical problems, it is hard to get practitioners to pay attention to the products. To start with, two possible approaches appear promising.
There is evidence that the chances of obtaining cooperation from both academics and practitioners for the kinds of roles envisioned by this project are stronger than is generally supposed—provided the necessary approaches are made in the right way. I will be spending a good portion of my time for the next year investigating which of these possible initiatives seem most likely to make good use of the resources available. No doubt the project steering committee (which includes practitioners and scholars) will have a few difficult decisions to make. And I will set about implementing as many of the resulting priorities as possible. I wouldn't mind a little help. One purpose of this article is to invite readers' thoughts, and even better, interest in participating in the initiatives described. I can be reached by email at honeyman@convenor.com 1. Deborah Kolb, for example, has defined as mediators, for some purposes, managers she has studied who spend much of their time mediating internal staff disputes.
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