Theory and Practice in Conflict Resolution

Background
Translating research into practitioners' language
Selected publications
Events and Presentations
Public sessions
Doing it yourself

Background
"Theory to Practice", a national project, was funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to develop more sophisticated and more consistent linkages between those who conceptualize new ideas for handling human conflict, and those who practice as neutrals—and advocates—throughout this field. Christopher Honeyman, managing partner of CONVENOR, was the project's director and principal investigator, and Mediation Center (Hamline University, St. Paul, MN) was the grant administrator. The initial term of the project was two years (1997-99), and in 1999 the Foundation awarded a major grant for a further three years. In 2002 the project was succeeded by the "Broad Field" project.

At the UMass/Boston meeting described below: Morton Deutsch and colleagues more pictures

"Theory to Practice" benefited greatly from its expert steering committee, including both scholars and practitioners drawn from diverse backgrounds—and from a long list of colleagues in a wide variety of practice and academic settings. Below you can find a summary of the major outputs and results, including links to some of the project's publications. Others concern translating research into practitioners' language, and will be found at the page of that title.

Translating Research into practitioners' language
At a Theory to Practice discussion held at RAND's Institute for Civil Justice, a highly experienced economist remarked "When I write, almost the entire length of the report is an effort to demonstrate how and why I reached my conclusions, because I know that some other scholar is going to challenge my methodology. But for a reader who doesn't care about that, the essentials could be said in a page or two."

The Translating Research page offers several examples of how long, complex and sometimes—gasp!—turgid research reports can be rewritten to make their essential content more accessible. It also incorporates a list of research "FAQs" for conflict resolution issues.

Selected Publications

Here There Be Monsters, by Christopher Honeyman, Bobbi McAdoo and Nancy Welsh (with dozens of colleagues participating), draws together what we have learned in years of work on creating better integration of scholars' and practitioners' knowledge across the conflict resolution field. It became the principal article in The Conflict Resolution Practitioner, a monograph published by the Office of Dispute Resolution, Supreme Court of Georgia to highlight the need for integration of scholarship and practical wisdom in conflict resolution.

Cracking the Hard-Boiled Student is a nuts-and-bolts description of the experiments that led to creation of exercises that "get across" important social psychology findings relevant to practice, but rarely read by practitioners. By Jeffrey M. Senger and Christopher Honeyman, and published in the monograph described above, The Conflict Resolution Practitioner.

Not Quite Protocols: Toward Collaborative Research in Dispute Resolution describes one of the Theory to Practice project's "moveable feasts" -- an effort to start to define terms on which scholars and practitioners might work together more productively, in the face of working environments on both sides whose influence can be insidious. By Christopher Honeyman, Barbara McAdoo and Nancy Welsh, with 21 colleagues. This article was first published in Conflict Resolution Quarterly, Fall 2001.

Have Gavel, Will Travel: Dispute Resolution’s Innocents Abroad describes another moveable feast, to begin to examine the risks created by American conflict resolution practitioners and scholars working abroad -- often, in cultures they don't take the time to understand. By Christopher Honeyman and Sandra Cheldelin This article was originally published in Conflict Resolution Quarterly, Spring 2002. 

The Wrong Mental Image of Settlement discusses a distortion in what people think "settlement" means --- a distortion that has serious consequences for the field. By Christopher Honeyman. This article was originally published in Negotiation Journal, January 2001.

System Disorders: Trying to Build Resolution into Managed Care is the report of another "moveable feast" --- this time, examining the huge but often hidden problems created by disputes among health care professionals as well as between HMOs and their plan participants. By Brad Honoroff and Christopher Honeyman. This article was first published in Alternatives, October 2001.

Guide to Dispute Resolution Practitioners and Researchers
The most thorough directory of sophisticated mediators and other neutrals in the field. This, the third edition, is incorporated into the CRInfo database. It includes a "reverse directory" of highly regarded scholars and researchers willing to hear from practitioner groups, and a cross-index intended to serve, in effect, as the field's first speaker's bureau.

The current Guide (3rd ed., 2001) replaces the former Researcher's Guide to Dispute Resolution Practitioners (Honeyman, C., Hamline University, 1997), adding dozens of scholars who specialize in many different aspects of the field, and cross-indexing both practitioners and scholars who are willing to accept speaking engagements.

ADR Practitioners and Researchers in a "Moveable Feast"
This article by Chris Honeyman describes why it was necessary to invent a new kind of encounter to get some key discussions going seriously. It appeared in the June, 1999 issue of Alternatives to the High Costs of Litigation (CPR, New York).

Theory v. Practice in Dispute Resolution
The initial article describing the Theory to Practice project was published in the July-August 1997 issue of Alternatives to the High Cost of Litigation, the newsletter of the CPR Institute for Dispute Resolution, New York. The version shown here has been slightly updated.

A special issue of Mediation Quarterly on the project appeared in Summer 1998. For the first time, this juxtaposed significant scholarly analyses of particular aspects of dispute resolution with the reactions of expert practitioners. Frames of Reference is Christopher Honeyman's anchor article in the special issue, and discusses some psychological disincentives that impede communication between scholars and practitioners.

Not Good For Your Career
This Honeyman article explores some of the disincentives practitioners and academics face when contemplating working together. Published January 1998 in Negotiation Journal.

Confidential, more or less
This short Honeyman article on the disparity between both the academic and the usual practitioner perceptions of what can be kept confidential in mediation, and the realities, was published in the American Bar Association's Dispute Resolution Magazine (January 1999, pp. 12-13.)

The Incredible Disappearing Profession
Another short Honeyman article, on the disparity between the ADR field's development of quality control mechanisms and our failure to implement them broadly, focuses on the consequences for how the field is beginning to be perceived. Recently published in CONSENSUS, newsletter of the MIT Public Disputes Program (Winter 1998-99.)

On covering dispute resolution
This Honeyman article focuses on the need for journalists to recognize a sea change in the handling of conflict for what it is. Published in the January-February, 1999 issue of IRE Journal, the newsletter of the society Investigative Reporters and Editors. A version modified to address dispute resolution practitioners' interests was published as "Viewpoint: On covering dispute resolution--How to report on a systemic change in the legal process" in the August 4, 1999 issue of ADR Report (Pike & Fischer / BNA.)

Events and Presentations (examples from among many)

• Hewlett Theory Centers Conference, March 2002, New York. As the closing  event of the five-year project, Theory to Practice collaborated with two Hewlett Theory Centers (CUNY-DRC at the City University of New York, and the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University) to host the 2002 conference of the nineteen academic centers funded by the Hewlett Foundation to develop new theory in conflict resolution. This innovative meeting used the deep expertise in practical conflict handling developed by four highly varied "communities of practice" in New York to challenge scholars to make more consistent and more creative use of practitioners' experience. Both the formative questions (What don't we know? What do we need to know? How would we find out?) and the approach taken were designed to create a straightforward and real discussion between experts from many practical and academic domains over several days, as a spur to new thinking. By two months later, dozens of short articles resulting from this meeting were already being compiled. (A description of the meeting by Russ Bleemer, editor of CPR's Alternatives, can be found in the journal's April, 2002 issue, Vol. 20, No. 4, pp. 83-86.)
  
  The outputs of this meeting are part of a transition from Theory to Practice to its successor, the Broad Field project. Further details will be found at that project's page when they become public. In particular, please look for a forthcoming special issue of Negotiation Journal (Fall, 2002) which will be devoted to this discussion.

• A special two-day conference, on one book. In May, 2000, a group of several dozen people met at Columbia Law School to celebrate the publication of The Handbook of Conflict Resolution, edited by Morton Deutsch and Peter Coleman, and to begin to discuss how the rich ideas contained in that volume might be turned into working materials that could be readily used in teaching, training, and practice. The meeting was a collaboration between the Theory to Practice project and Columbia University's multidisciplinary Conflict Resolution Network. In connection with the larger meeting, a subgroup of seven scholars and practitioners also held a planning meeting to design a more on-going project, which may last several years. The object was to use lessons learned by working with the Deutsch/Coleman volume to design training and teaching materials drawn from additional sources.

  The initial outcome of this effort was a two-day conference, focused on the Handbook, hosted by the University of Massachusetts/Boston on March 2-3, 2001. The basic idea of the conference was to assemble cross-disciplinary groups to create teaching, training, and practice materials, based on the Handbook, on the spot. By tackling a single—though, with 27 chapters and 37 authors, complex—work, we have begun to build both a collaborative network and a systematic approach, for translation of other major works into the interactive exercises and other working tools that we think are necessary for widespread dissemination of important research-based findings. Article

• Theory to Practice "tracks" at national conferences. At their combined 2000 conference, the Society of Professionals in Dispute Resolution and the Conflict Resolution Education Network featured nine sessions organized by Theory to Practice, which highlighted unusual combinations of scholars and practitioners, addressing cutting-edge issues. A similar effort was mounted for the 2001 inaugural conference of SPIDR's successor, the Association for Conflict Resolution.
• Nine sessions at a regional conference. The Theory to Practice experiments at the SPIDR/CREnet 2000 conference were based on experience gained at the 1999 annual conference hosted by the Wisconsin Association of Mediators and co-sponsored by the mediator organizations of several other Midwest states. That conference explicitly adopted "theory to practice" as its special focus. The Theory to Practice project team presented a total of nine sessions (eight workshops and a plenary session) on the issues addressed by the project. As a result of this effort, the conference was co-sponsored in 1999 not only by an unusual number of practitioner organizations, but also by two academic groups -- the Institute for Legal Studies of the University of Wisconsin Law School, and Marquette University.
• A "research charrette" drawing scholars and practitioners into collaboration in designing two major studies. Theory to Practice joined with the Institute for Legal Studies of the University of Wisconsin Law School to design and present an unusual symposium. The symposium involved a national group of 35 highly experienced scholars and practitioners, addressing the question "What do we need to know about dispute resolution that studying Florida's extraordinary experience could tell us?" This was designed to follow up on an August, 1999 session which Chris Honeyman and Florida Dispute Resolution Center Director (and SPIDR President) Sharon Press co-designed to provide the Florida State Courts with a cross-section of expertise on how to design a critically important study of a massive caseload.
• A moveable feast on an international issue. One of nine such ventures was held in Washington in February, 2000 in conjunction with the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, George Mason University. This meeting focused on a growing problem in the field: the problems of (and increasingly, created by) U.S.-based professionals working abroad in conflict resolution. An article describing the discussion, by Christopher Honeyman and Sandra Cheldelin, appeared in the Spring, 2002 issue of Conflict Resolution Quarterly.
• A moveable feast on health care disputes. Another of the moveable feast series was held in Boston in March, 2000. Three to five representatives each from the Tufts Health Plan, Blue Cross/Blue Shield of New England, and Harvard Pilgrim Health Plan (among the largest and most innovative HMOs in New England) participated, along with scholars and practitioners with a variety of sources of expertise. Article

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Public Sessions
Sessions exploring project issues were held at a number of national and regional conferences, including:

• National Conference on Peacemaking & Conflict Resolution, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (1997).
• Law & Society Association, St. Louis, Missouri (1997), Snowmass, Colorado (1998), Chicago (1999), Miami (2000) and Budapest (2001).
• Society of Professionals in Dispute Resolution, Orlando, Florida (1997), Portland, Oregon (1998), Baltimore, (1999), and Albuquerque (2000).
• Association for Conflict Resolution, Toronto (2001).
• International Association for Conflict Resolution (IACM), Cergy-Pontoise, France (2001).
• American Bar Association, Section on Conflict Resolution conference, San Francisco (2000), Washington, DC (2001) and Seattle (2002).
• Wisconsin Association of Mediators, Madison, Wisconsin (1997, 1998, 1999, 2000 and 2001.)

Discussions were also held at a number of the Hewlett Theory Centers and other major academic groups (including Georgetown, ICAR/George Mason University, Institute for Civil Justice/RAND, Institute for Legal Studies/University of Wisconsin, CUNY/John Jay College of Criminal Justice, UCLA/Western Justice Center, Columbia Law School, Stanford Center on Conflict and Negotiation, and others.) Outstanding panels of academics and practitioners assembled for these sessions, and the resulting discussions were illuminating, but there are too many to reproduce here.

Doing it Yourself
On September 24, 1998 the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution (ICAR) at George Mason University, in conjunction with the District of Columbia-area chapter of SPIDR and the Northern Virginia Mediation Service, held a one-day regional symposium on the nexus of theory and practice. The day's program is an example of what can be done locally or regionally in a number of cities which incorporate both strong communities of practitioners and significant numbers of academics interested in dispute resolution. Now that Theory to Practice has completed its five-year span (for its successor project, see Broad Field) it is especially important that others take action in this "space," and the many groups who hosted "moveable feasts" and other events in collaboration with the project have demonstrated repeatedly the interest that can be generated locally. We look forward to receiving requests for advice in efforts that develop from these early experiments for years to come -- and we encourage readers of this page to consider what issues in your own city, practice specialty or scholarly area might benefit from a practitioner/scholar collaboration, and whom you might partner with...