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In this article, we focus on alternative dispute resolution procedures, in particular third party procedures. We describe eight different procedures and provide examples of how these procedures are used in different cultural contexts. We then evaluate the procedures in terms of how they impact four key criteria that have been noted in the literature related to negotiation: process criteria, settlement criteria, issue-related criteria, and relationship criteria. We subsequently explore the potential impact of culture on evaluations of these criteria. We finish with a discussion of future directions for research and practice, emphasizing that procedural recommendations should be made carefully when the criteria for effectiveness and applicability are derived from US-centric research. In other words, there is not “one best choice” for third party procedures universal to the myriad cultures on our planet.

Symbolical-interaction sociology is useful to mediators and relevant to mediation practice. It explores the elements of everyday social interaction including behavior of disputants during instances of conflict. In particular, Erving Goffman’s frame analysis offers mediators a practical tool useful in assessing and managing both the intellectual and emotional responses of disputants during mediation. Moreover, frame analysis can effectively guide mediators in assisting disputants to reorient their respective responses to each other and to the dispute, thereby enhancing opportunities for meaningful dialogue. In addition, Goffman’s game, drama, and ritual metaphors offer simple but powerful analytic tools guiding mediation clients through terrain which would otherwise be chaotic and overwhelming. Mediators committed to enhancing their practices and researchers in search of a sound theoretical base for effective dispute resolution can benefit substantially by applying these insights to the practice of mediation.

This chapter focuses on transforming cross-cultural conflict and misunderstanding into a learning opportunity, using a case study to illustrate an approach that has proven effective in tens of thousands of conflicts. This approach surfaces cultural values and approaches to work, toward improving intercultural management practices. It also supports employees to resolve their issues themselves, toward more sustainable solutions.

This study uses a path analytic model to investigate the influence of fairness (i.e., procedural fairness, distributive fairness, and interactional fairness) on managers’ budget satisfaction and the influence of managers’ budget satisfaction on budget performance. To this end, data from 92 U.S. individual managers are used for the study. The results show that fairness perceptions have a significant positive impact on budget satisfaction which, in turn, positively affects budget performance. Further analyses indicate that budget satisfaction mediates the relationship between fairness measures and budget performance. The implications, limitations, and directions for future research are discussed.

The present paper attempts to map the discursive relations between conflict and settlement as reflected in the realms of law and mediation during the second half of the 20th century, offering a 21st century model to combine the mediation drive to settle through reaching inter-subjective transformation with the legal drive to escalate and promote social conflict. Contemporary mediation, according to this model, should involve on the one hand “negotiating for justice,” according to the familiar models of problem solving and transformation, and on the other hand “fighting for law”: acknowledging the self-referential and ideological quality of conflicts, while emphasizing the pragmatic need to end them through an interpretive public act that involves value judgments.

A somewhat underappreciated aspect of the burgeoning rush to regional trade agreements (RTAs) is a discrepancy between the dispute settlement procedure (DSP) embodied in the original World Trade Organization (WTO) Dispute Settlement Understanding (DSU) and that found in the language of many RTAs. This chapter explores the issue in the context of a dynamic repeated game of trade agreements. As is well known, the institutional alternatives available in negotiating multilateral freer trade agreements – regional agreements, side agreements, trade dispute settlement punishments, and so on – can proscribe the limits and shape the nature of self-enforcing trade agreements. Here, we suggest the extent to which deviations from the WTO DSP embodied in RTAs – for example, “private interest access,” “third party procedures,” and “choice of forum” – can not only work against the interests of “weaker parties” but furthermore undermine multilateral agreements closer to free trade.

This study revisits the area of reliance on budget to evaluate employee performance. It contributes in several ways. First, it updates this traditional research area making it more relevant to the current debate on the use of financial vis-à-vis nonfinancial measures in multidimensional performance measurement systems. Second, it examines the relationship between reliance on budget and budgetary participation in a manner that is different from that used by prior studies. Instead of treating budgetary participation as a moderating variable, the study examines it as a mediating variable. Specifically, the study hypothesizes that reliance on budget as performance measures affects the extent of employee budgetary participation. Third, it incorporates the recent interest by management accounting researchers in organizational fairness into this research area. It hypothesizes that budgetary participation affects the extent of employees’ perceptions of procedural fairness, which, in turn, influences employee job satisfaction and performance. The structural equation modeling results based on a sample of 152 managers indicate that the use of budget targets for performance evaluation is positively associated with employee job satisfaction and performance. However, much of these effects are indirect via (1) budgetary participation and (2) procedural fairness.