Gini Nelson’s Engaging Conflicts

As his bio states:

Chetan Dhruve has worked for several organizations including IBM, Cisco Systems, and the Department for International Development (the aid wing of the British Foreign Office). He has an MBA from Cass Business School (London), an MA in International Journalism from City University (London) and a BSc in Physics, Maths and Electronics from Bangalore University (Bangalore).
Summary:

• Your behavior is affected by the system in which you live and work.
• At work, you don’t have the right to choose the person who has power over you — your boss. That makes him a dictator, and you a subject.
• The system is hence that of a dictatorship. Your boss, you and your colleagues all behave accordingly.
• To change the system to a free system, subordinates should be given the right to vote for their bosses.
• The result will be a more productive and successful company, and a more successful and healthier you.

I came across his article Why Your Boss is Programmed to be a Dictator at ChangeThis recently. As it says:

Did you vote your boss into the corner office? If not, perhaps your boss is a dictator. Chetan Dhruve explains why bosses become dictators.

You can find the article at ChangeThis or download it by clicking here:Why Your Boss is Programmed to be a Dictator

            

Today’s post introduces a series co-authored by myself and international business attorney Vonda K. Vandaveer.

For business leaders, alternative dispute resolution rather than litigation has no doubt become the preferred process for handling problems, thanks to its efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and flexibility. As businesses become more global, however, the traditional methods of face-to-face mediation, arbitration or other dispute resolution processes pose significant logistical barriers to parties separated by oceans or continents, calling into question traditional ADR’s value in these circumstances.

For example, a U.S. company with a prime contract to build a camp for the U.S. Army in Iraq may subcontract with a local vendor for day laborers. The contract drafted by the U.S. company inevitably will provide for some form of ADR, such as mediation, but equally inevitably the U.S. company will place venue in its home state, thousands of miles away from the other party.

Needless to say, such a provision presents a financial and logistical hardship to the foreign subcontractor. Not only does the party have to share the mediator’s expenses, its representatives would have to pay for air fare and lodging in the foreign venue.

In addition, this travel means valuable time away from their own business. As would be expected, this term in reality has a chilling effect on the distant party from engaging in ADR with the U.S. company. In fact, if the contract drafter is the more powerful of the parties, it may have included the clause with that very intent, knowing the smaller company has no leverage to argue for a more even-handed term.

If the parties are of equal power, at most they might negotiate venue in a neutral location, which means in case of a dispute both parties will have to pay for flights and lodging and take time away from their work. In addition, unless the parties find a mediator in the local jurisdiction, they would have to pay for the mediator’s expenses as well further augmenting expenses. As a consequence, with no incentive to engage in ADR, the parties will likely end up in court in one jurisdiction or another, the very result both parties were hoping to avoid.

These parties, though, have another solution to these logistical problems that should be included in the international ADR repertoire: online dispute resolution, also known as ODR.

With online dispute resolution, these logistical barriers pose no problem. Each party and the neutral all remain in their respective locations while engaging in the dispute resolution process, saving costs and time away from work. This article wiill address these questions:

1. How Does ODR Work?
2. What Disputes Work Well for ODR?
3. My Contract Does Not Address ODR, Can I Take Advantage Of It?
4. Are There Special Considerations In Selecting An ODR Leader For Business Disputes?

This series will continue next week.

Authors:
Vonda K. Vandaveer is an attorney based in Washington, DC concentrating on international business law, immigration, and federal procurement. She publishes the U.S. Business and Immigration Law blog, and can be contacted at (202) 340-1215, and vonda@vkvlaw.com. Her law firm site is www.vkvlaw.com.

Gini Nelson is a mediator and attorney based in Santa Fe, NM who publishes the Engaging Conflicts blog. Previous Engaging Conflicts posts on ODR include posts about Cyberweek 2006 and Cyberweek 2007.

            

As her bio states:

Randah Taher is a project developer and consultant who worked in montreal for 7 years before moving to Toronto, Canada, where she currently resides. She works with learning, non-profit organizations, and social enterprises, and is involved in projects concerning youth, education, and community revitalization. She consults and trains groups in creative problem solving tools, innovative strategic management, restructuring and program development. Randah is the founder of My Arabic Story, a cultural hub with worldwide volunteers, which narrates folktales by storytelling, doing puppet shows, and recording CDs.

I came across her article 10 Guidelines for Effective Brainstorming at ChangeThis recently. As it says:

Creativity can be taught, nurtured, and enhanced. It does not belong solely to the artist among us, and certainly is not genetically limited to the gifted.

You can find the article at ChangeThis or download it by clicking here:10 Guidelines for Effective Brainstorming

            

I came across these International Dispute Negotiation podcasts recently on the International Institute for Conflict Prevention and Resolution’s (CPR) website. They address hot topics in cross-border commercial conflict resolution. New ones are added every Friday. Michael McIlwrath, Senior Counsel, Litigation for GE Infrastructure - Oil & Gas, is host. Michael is based at his company’s headquarters in Florence, Italy and represents his division in disputes world-wide, including work in negotiations, mediation, and arbitration.

Recent podcasts include:

• Offshore Litigation Work in India — This controversial method of reducing litigation costs in common law systems, like the US and UK, send legal work to India.
• How to Effectively Use Mediators with interview featuring Prof. Dwight Golann from Boston’s Suffolk University Law School.

Tomorrow’s podcast is “The Arbitration Tribunal of Barcelona”.

Click here for more information.

            

As his bio states:

Malcolm Gladwell was born in 1963 in England and grew up in Canada. He graduated with a degree in history from the University of Toronto in 1984. From 1987 to 1996, he was a reporter for The Washington Post, first as a science writer and then as New York City bureau chief. In 2000, he published The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. Since 1996, he has been a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine.

I came across his article The Talent Myth at ChangeThis recently. As it says:

When Malcolm Gladwell wrote “The Tipping Point”, he had a sensation on his hands. Called “one of those rare books that changes the way you think about, well, everything” it quickly climbed the charts to become a bestseller. Now Malcolm writes a manifesto for ChangeThis on the seemingly paradoxical truth that talent is not a firm’s greatest asset.

You can find the article at change this, or download it by clicking here:The Talent Myth

            

As I’ve said before, here, I adopted coffee as my drug of choice while in law school. A relative just sent me a post with coffee art, lovely photos, here. It starts with this (but I can’t necessarily vouch for it — further search found a New York barista named Sammy Lin featured for his creations, here):

There is a restaurant in Vancouver that dresses up the lattes. You get to watch them create the pictures.

What can be done with coffee, cream, milk & imagination.

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Publisher Don Hutcheson has added an ADR column to online work-life balance journal, The Complete Lawyer. The column is The Human Factor and it is written by me and my fellow bloggers Stephanie West Allen of idealawg and Brains on Purpose, Victoria Pynchon of Settle It Now Negotiation Blog, and Diane Levin of the Mediation Channel. You can meet us in the first column in which we introduce ourselves to The Complete Lawyer’s readers.

            

Peter Adler is one of the conflict specialists I respect most. Earlier posts about his work are posted here and here. He has a new, particularly timely article at Mediate.com that bears reporting: 12 Questions for Hillary Clinton, John McCain, and Barack Obama on “Eye-of-the-storm” Leadership.

These are Peter’s questions to the Presidential Candidates:

1. What Is Your History of Bringing People Together?
2. Who Are Your Best Examples of Leaders Who Brought People Together?
3. On Which Issues Will You Immediately Seek Bipartisan Support, and How Will You Get It?
4. Who Will You Have To Partner With To Achieve Your Objectives?
5. On Those Top Issues, How Will You Determine Whether You Compromise or Stand Firm?
6. How Specifically Will You Relate Differently With Countries At Odds With the U.S.?
7. What Specific Kinds of Arrangements Do You Think Can Be Brokered In the Middle East?
8. What Is Your Dominant Leadership Style, and Why Are You the Right Person At This Time?
9. What Is An Example Of Your Intellectual Flexibility, Your Ability To Shift Your Views In Response To New Information or Changing Conditions?
10. In What Ways Should America Change Its Role In the World, and How Will You Mobilize Americans To Support That Shift?
11. What Mistake Made By Previous Presidents Are You Most Eager To Avoid?
12. How Will You Handle That 3 A.M. Call?

Here’s Peter’s article.

            

As his bio states:

Andrew Keen’s deeply controversial Cult of the Amateur [published in 2007] is the first book that exposes the economic, ethical and social dangers of the Web 2.0 revolution. Andrew hasn’t always been a contrarian. In the mid-nineties, he was a member of that generation of Silicon Valley visionaries who pioneered the Internet. He founded Audiocafe.com in 1995 and established it as one of the most highly trafficked websites of the late nineties. Today, he is the host of the Internet chat show afterTV.com and regularly appears on the web, television and radio. His work can be found on his CultoftheAmateur blog, his syndicated Podtech video-essay, his ZDnet column as well as in traditional publications.

I came across his article Against You: A Manifesto in Favor of Audience at ChangeThis recently. As it says:

If a tree falls in the forest, and there is no one there to hear it, does it make a sound? Andrew Keen asserts that the same riddle can be applied to Web 2.0. While new Internet technology has revolutionized traditional media and allows everyone to be writer/creator, if everyone is writer/creator, then just who is left to listen to the cacophony?

You can find the article at ChangeThis, or download it by clicking here: Against You: A Manifesto in Favor of Audience