Christopher Honeyman
This article was first published in the July-August 1997 issue of CPR’s Alternatives to the High Cost of Litigation.
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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 approaches
Given 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.
- Convening more thorough on-going relationships between theory centers and a cross-section of national organizations—not just SPIDR and other ADR practitioner organizations, but professional and industry groups of a variety of fields which relate in part to dispute resolution or which generate significant numbers of disputes. Every such organization needs to fill time at least at one annual conference, and people with ideas to talk about are often welcome.
- Developing consistent linkages between Hewlett centers (along with other conflict resolution scholars) and such professional organizations’ publishing efforts. All such organizations have to put out newsletters, and some publish journals. Journals and newsletters in engineering, medicine and many other fields already run articles on ADR, though the level of sophistication is often suspect. It is clear, therefore, that both their editors and their readers see ADR as related to their diverse fields. A “communications push” is likely to improve the frequency with which such organs devote space to dispute resolution theorists’ efforts.
- Developing a routine relationship between theory centers and CLE/CEU course offerors. Such continuing education courses are a requirement of many licensed professions which now claim ADR roles. An organized effort to make it easy and convenient for those who regularly teach such courses to hear new research directly can be expected to raise their enthusiasm for using it, and in turn to harness the existing network of such courses in more productive ways. We think those who teach these courses routinely may prove receptive to an approach which promises to improve their sophistication—for competitive reasons, among others.
- Developing a speaker’s bureau for supplying scholars for corporate, etc. meetings. While this is bound to involve a subset among scholars—inherently it’s limited to those who can be entertaining and are willing to be flexible—this approach addresses a uniquely resource-rich audience. Such an effort has the potential not only to pay something directly to those scholars or centers involved, but more important, to improve awareness of scholarship in this field among civic and business leaders.
- Developing a more productive relationship with the press. It seems unwise, as well as uneconomical, to ignore the fact that there already exists a whole profession which (at its best) embodies the ability to explain the complicated to the busy. There may be multiple ways of improving the level of sophistication of press discussions of dispute resolution, including fostering a specialization in dispute resolution among a small group of print journalists; organizing a regular series of briefings; and perhaps fostering a long-term relationship with one or two schools of journalism.
Problems 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.
- Developing a national pool of practitioners with significant levels of expertise for review of theorists’ concepts and proposals, and for suggesting useful areas of inquiry. I think some of the unreality practitioners perceive in academic work arises from nothing more complicated than geography combined with time pressure. Proposals tend to be developed, I believe, on a “just-in-time” basis. Coupled with the limited range of acquaintance which characterizes most of us, it’s not surprising that many proposals are developed without input from the particular practitioners who might be best placed to advise on a given study. Establishing a group who are willing to commit to a fast turn-around on requests for comment on new proposals on an on-going basis would help to avert the complex and costly studies that aren’t as useful as they might be. Members of such a group could also help scholars formulate other kinds of projects and initiatives in ways that respond to real-world concerns.
- Developing a national pool of ADR provider organizations willing in principle to serve as partners in empirical research. Without an organized approach to such contacts, experience suggests it is unlikely that theorists will get the necessary entree into many organizations. Developing such a capability for researchers is a multi-stage process. Few researchers have found it worth their while, on their own, to cultivate relationships with ADR provider organizations over a period of time. Yet obtaining a flicker of interest, followed by a guarded expression of commitment in principle, are likely to be necessary prerequisites for any study that will require significant effort of the participating practitioners. An academic who wants to involve himself or herself in a practitioner group’s casework, particularly when the contemplated study requires either changes in case flow or a control group, can raise all kinds of disturbing issues in the practitioners’ minds. In the absence of the kind of groundwork contemplated by this project, the first approach can all too easily come off looking like interference, or even as somewhat predatory.
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
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.