From time to time, an issue of the Negotiation Journal will include a set of articles on a common theme. Often, these contributions are the fruit of a recent conference, as was the case last April when we published a special issue devoted to the next generation of negotiation pedagogy.
Then, there are the welcome accidents, as with this issue. The articles you will see here were submitted at different times and moved through the editorial process at various speeds but happily came together at the right time. You will not have to strain to see that most of them deal with conflict resolution dynamics in one form or another.
An international authorial team (two from the United States plus four from Poland) sets the major theme in their note on teaching students to grasp and apply ideas from complexity theory. They maintain that understanding of conflict dynamics must come before any realistic hope of crafting sustainable solutions. To support this assertion, they conducted a pilot study in which some students were introduced to the idea of “attractors,” which in this context is a term for a self‐organizing convergence of behaviors and attitudes that can create patterns that are hard to break. The students were also trained to use a software that can help negotiators visualize both the attractors for any given conflict as well as how changes in the situation will affect those attractors and the conflict in the long term. In a subsequent negotiation simulation, these students more successfully addressed long‐term dynamics than did a control group without such training.
In the same vein, the article by Brooks Holtom, Katharine Gagné, and Catherine Tinsley describes a variety of curricular materials designed to give students practice in dealing with unexpected change as negotiation unfolds. They remind us that it is not enough to learn from negotiation, but we must also learn on the fly within it. To help students develop these skills, they recommend using “shocks and rumors” to shake the simulation up a bit. They describe new simulations and also suggest ways in which existing role‐plays can be adapted to make them more manageably dynamic.
There is no need to force a dynamic construction on our two research reports. Both deal with mediation, which itself is a process of learning and adaptation for everyone involved. Jean Poitras, Arnaud Stimec, and Jean‐François Roberge present a study of how the presence of an attorney can affect outcomes and party attitudes in mediation. Despite the many fears of mediators, their results show no difference in settlement rates. But they did find that when a lawyer was present, the parties tended to be less satisfied with the mediator and not as well reconciled either. The authors suggest that the decline in satisfaction may be simply because of the fact that the mediator must share the stage — and the credit — with the lawyers present. The finding about lessened reconciliation, however, may indicate that the lawyers foster resolution at the cost of repairing relationships.
The research report by Jessica Jameson, Andrea Bodtker, and Tim Linker addresses mediator strategies for eliciting emotional communication in workplace conflicts. The authors regard the deft surfacing of feelings as potentially transformative. They carefully analyze transcripts of unscripted simulations, facilitated by actual mediators, and then offer prescriptive advice on how mediators can help parties disrupt their existing patterns of communication to build better relationships.
Brian Ibbotson Groth heroically reviews three negotiation textbooks for this issue of the Journal, two new editions and one that is brand new. He admits to a personal preference for using a text as it provides course coherence, as he puts it. But while he is respectful and good natured in reviewing each text, Brian does not flinch from noting what is missing in some of the volumes — nor from questioning the need for frequent new editions of well‐established titles.
Finally, Sheila Heen returns us to our theme of conflict resolution dynamics with a review of Bernie Mayer's new book, Staying with Conflict: A Strategic Approach to Ongoing Disputes. Mayer, Heen writes, makes a strong case that mediators need to commit themselves to a longer, more expansive, more dynamic conflict resolution process instead of the typical short‐term, limited, settlement‐focused mediation. Instead, he recommends that mediators “stay with” their clients and their clients' conflicts, helping them develop the skills that will enable them to better manage conflict issues that may emerge in different forms long after the clients leave the mediation table.
