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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.

The purpose of this study is to understand mediation in divorce cases where intimate partner violence (IPV) is a concern. These cases may involve managing power imbalances, coercive control or risk for continued violence.

In this paper, the authors use feminist and sociological theoretical approaches and grounded theory to analyze triangulated ethnographic data to explore how mediators construct and manage the issue of IPV in mediation.

The results indicate that mediators often share a common discourse about IPV that asserts that mediators are professionals with the skills to both identify IPV and to appropriately conduct mediations where IPV is present. However, to achieve successful mediations mediators sometimes choose to discount the seriousness of IPV in assessments. They also use a set of fluid strategies to handle potential power imbalances that allow them to represent themselves as unbiased, even while those strategies risk the equity of the mediation.

The authors share several strategies that could enhance the social justice of the process for all parties, including uniformity in assessing whether IPV is a concern and oversight of mediators’ practices and training.

The results indicate mediators often share a common discourse about IPV that asserts mediators are professionals with the skills to identify IPV and to appropriately conduct mediations where IPV is present. To reach settlement mediators use a set of fluid mediation and accommodation strategies to handle potential power imbalances due to IPV that allow them to represent themselves as impartial, even while those strategies may risk equity in the mediation.

The unique data provide a behind-the-scenes look at mediation generated from participant observation of mediation training and actual mediations, along with interviews with 30 practicing mediators.

This paper aims to study the ability of laccase for decolourisation of reactive dyes in presence and absence of natural and synthetic mediators.

Box–Behnken design was used to optimize the parameters to achieve optimum response value. Preliminary screening using several mediators was performed to evaluate extent of decolourisation for the purpose followed by selection of effective mediators only.

Laccase performs in acidic pH; increase in temperature enhances its activity. Rate of decolourisation depends on laccase and dye concentration, temperature, pH and treatment time. Out of five mediators studied, HBT, BT and VA showed promising results.

Study on decolourisation was conducted for individual dyes. In some cases, dyes are applied in combination which requires further study for authentication of data.

Decolourisation with laccase has been found to be a promising technology in waste water treatment. However, selection of mediator remains a crucial factor.

Reactive dyes are self-hydrolysed over time under natural conditions and extent of decolourisation depends on concentration of dye discharged and time spent. If not decolourised quickly, it imposes restriction on use of river water for irrigation.

In this work, activity of various natural and synthetic mediators alongwith laccase was studied to achieve maximum decolourisation which was not studied earlier.

The paper seeks to examine the debate on mediator style and provide empirical evidence on mediator orientation, which has implications for party choice and the development of professional standards for construction mediators in the UK.

This paper analyses the theoretical arguments and distinctions in mediator style and assesses the available evidence relating to the utilisation of evaluative or facilitative mediator approaches in the UK and US construction industry. The paper reports on data from qualitative interviews with construction lawyers experienced in using mediation in the UK to assess the level of evaluative conduct experienced.

The findings suggest that interviewees had experienced a mix of evaluative and facilitative interventions by mediators. The data support the contention that construction mediation in the UK mirrors the experience of the USA and is becoming “lawyer‐driven” and adversarial, with mediators utilising evaluative techniques which some members of the legal profession prefer.

The qualitative data are based on a small sample of mediation users in the UK construction industry. However, interviewees were selected from respondents to a randomly conducted large‐scale postal survey of commercial and construction lawyers. All interviewees were repeat users of the process and all but one had received training in mediation or are practising lawyer‐mediators.

The data provide evidence of different mediator techniques currently utilised in the UK construction industry and the practices of lawyers in the mediation process. The findings have implications for party choice and should inform the development of professional standards in construction mediation practice.

The paper provides original data on the practices of mediators and lawyers in construction mediation.

Success and failure in mediation are widely understood to determine whether a state will receive positive or negative reputation outcomes from undertaking a mediation role in an international conflict. Research from mediation in domestic settings contradicts this view, finding that peer mediators in school and community settings received positive mediator outcomes from undertaking their role, even when they failed to facilitate an agreement between disputants. This paper aims to test this assumption and argues that mediation success and failure are only weakly correlated with observable reputation outcomes for mediating states and proposes an alternative explanatory framework.

The hypothesis was inductively generated through a comparative analysis of single-state mediation attempts selected from the Uppsala Conflict Database Project MILC data set. The cases selected were South Africa’s mediation attempts in Côte d’Ivoire from 2004 to 2005 and Comoros from 2003 to 2004, and Mexico’s mediation attempts in Colombia (National Liberation Army) in 2004 and Guatemala (Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity) between 1994 and 1996. To contextualise the findings and develop the explanatory framework, South African mediation attempts in Burundi and the DRC are discussed in the closing sections of the paper.

This paper finds that mediation success and failure are only weakly correlated with mediator outcomes. Mediator outcomes are explained by the activity level of the mediating state in providing mediation services; the positive intention of the mediator to assist in resolving the conflict; the scale of the conflict mediated; the severity of spill over effects from the conflict in question; the regional importance of the conflict; the proximity of the government which a mediating state looks to develop relations with to the conflict; the importance of the mediation attempt within the peace process; the level of contestation of the mediation attempt, meaning the extent to which mediation attempts are themselves sites of regional or global international power politics; and the success or failure of the mediation attempt.

An explanatory framework for state mediator outcomes in which the outcome of a mediation attempt for the third-party state is not determined solely, or even primarily, by mediation success or failure bridges mediation research applying to international and domestic issue areas and provides additional information for policy makers regarding the costs and benefits of committing their state to processes of mediation in conflicts with low probabilities of resolution. This is particularly important for state policy makers, given that mediation is successful on average in only one out of every three attempts.