Employees, Supervisors, and Workplace Mediation

Abstract

This study explores the experience of disputant-disputant interpersonal justice in workplace mediation in a public organization. The results show that there are significant differences between employees' and supervisors' experiences of disputant-disputant interpersonal justice. Moreover, the results indicate that the quality of participants' interactions in mediation is significantly related to the quality of the mediated outcome in terms of settlement or case resolution. When disputants experience interpersonal justice with each other during mediation, they are more likely to reach a full resolution to the dispute. When disputants corroborate each other's reports of their own behaviors during mediation, they are also more likely to achieve settlement of the mediation. Disputants who received an apology from the other party were more likely to report a settlement to the dispute. In sum, this field test supports the theory of disputant-disputant interpersonal justice and provides evidence that it is an important element in the mediated resolution of a workplace dispute.

What do ‘lay’ people know about justice? An empirical enquiry

“…One said: ‘It gave me an opportunity to put my point across.’ However, being heard by the mediator was less important than being heard by their opponent: ‘It gave an opportunity cos, prior to that point, you, you're not having conversations directly with the other party.’‘I can't remember who spoke first but we both did speak and we spoke quite a lot, you know what I mean.’ 2 This runs counter to much procedural justice research, in which the legitimacy of a process turns on the behaviour of an authority figure/decision-maker (though see Nesbit et al . (2012) for a similar finding). In a process in which parties are themselves decision-makers, fairness may depend more on the opportunity to be heard by one's counterpart.…”

“…This runs counter to much procedural justice research, in which the legitimacy of a process turns on the behaviour of an authority figure/decision-maker (though see Nesbit et al (2012) for a similar finding). In a process in which parties are themselves decision-makers, fairness may depend more on the opportunity to be heard by one's counterpart.…”

The Management of Workplace Conflict: Contrasting Pathways in the HRM Literature

“…A body of research, mostly US in origin, sets out the benefits that await organizations should they use mediation to address workplace conflict, including high settlement rates, improved conflict management by individual managers, the early resolution of disputes, which lead to substantial savings in terms of staff time and cost, and high participant satisfaction rates (see Bingham, ; Colvin ; Nesbit et al . ). Similar findings were found in a number of UK studies (Latreille ; Saundry and Wibberley ).…”

The Scathingly Brilliant Scholarship of Lisa Blomgren Amsler (Formerly Bingham)

“…Thus, much of Lisa's ADR research addressed questions of organizational justice, or perceptions of fairness in the workplace. This focus was central to her work on the USPS REDRESS program, where, following the traditional four‐factor view of organizational justice (e.g., Greenberg, ), she and her team repeatedly found high levels of satisfaction with distributive, procedural, informational, and interpersonal justice (e.g., Bingham, 1997b; Bingham, Chesmore, Moon, & Napoli, ; Bingham & Pitts, ; Nesbit, Nabatchi, & Bingham, ). However, Lisa realized that no one had assessed the validity of the four‐factor model in the context of workplace mediation, and questioned its operationalization in settings characterized by tripartite relationships among actors, as is the case in the disputant–disputant–neutral interactions of employment ADR programs.…”