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This research concerned preference and choice among six procedures commonly used to resolve disputes. Two experiments revealed that, compared to complainants, respondents liked inaction and disliked arbitration. However, the most striking findings concerned general preferences among the procedures: consensual procedures (negotiation, mediation, and advisory‐arbitration) were best liked, followed by arbitration, with inaction and struggle least liked. Further analysis suggested that perceptions of self‐interest and societal norms underlie these procedural preferences, with the latter perceptions apparently more important. An examination of choices among the procedures revealed that negotiation was by far the most common first choice of action. If negotiation failed to resolve the conflict, the following escalative sequence of actions was typically endorsed: mediation, then advisory arbitration, then arbitration, and finally struggle.

This research examined the relationships among a number of outcomes of mediation. The sample consisted of 73 hearings at two dispute settlement centers in New York State. Predictions from goal achievement theory were contrasted with predictions from procedural justice theory. In accordance with goal achievement theory, disputants who attained their goals in the agreement indicated immediate satisfaction with that agreement and with the conduct of the hearing. However, goal achievement was unrelated to long‐run success or long‐run satisfaction with the agreement, a result which may apply primarily to the mediation of interpersonal disputes. The predictions from procedural justice theory were more successful. Disputants who perceived that the underlying problems had been aired, that the mediator had understood what they said and that they had received a fair hearing also showed immediate satisfaction with the agreement and with the conduct of the hearing. In addition, these and related perceptions—especially in the eyes of the respondent—were predictive of several aspects of long‐run success.

A variety of strategies were identified in interview‐based chronologies of ordinary interpersonal conflicts. Verbal confrontation with the adversary was the most common strategy and usually preceded other approaches. Efforts to arrange mediation and arbitration were extremely rare, though third parties were approached for other reasons in most of the cases. It was possible to distinguish complainants from respondents in 61 percent of the cases. Respondents employed more problem solving and apology than complainants, while complainants employed marginally more pressure tactics.

This observational and interview study investigated the role of caucusing (private meetings between the mediator and a disputant) in community mediation. The results from 73 cases at two mediation centers indicate that mediators are more likely to caucus when disputants have a history of escalation, are hostile toward each other during the hearing, and fail to engage in joint problem solving. Caucus sessions were found to discourage direct hostility between the disputants but to encourage indirect hostility. There was also evidence that caucus sessions foster disputant flexibility and problem solving between the disputant and the mediator. However, no relationship was found between the occurrence or nature of caucusing and the likelihood of agreement or the quality of the mediated outcome.

Literature on power differentials within mediation sessions has indicated that when power imbalances are too great, mediation is not the proper venue for the resolution of these disputes. However, when there is not an incapacitating imbalance, it is possible that mediators can take steps to rectify this situation. A field study was conducted at two community dispute settlement centers in New York State, with the proceedings of 73 actual cases transcribed and then coded to: (1) determine the impact of unequal power on the outcome of interpersonal mediation; (2) examine how mediators deal with unequal power; (3) assess the impact of mediator efforts to balance power discrepancies, and (4) determine the impact of disputant characteristics on differences in power and outcome. It was found that the mediators in the present study did attempt to remedy power imbalances: by encouraging the more passive disputant to participate more in the hearing by criticizing aggressive disputants, and by asking embarrassing questions of more argumentative disputants and those taking a determined principled stance. However, contrary to expectations, it was found that mediator efforts to balance power discrepancies were not successful, power discrepancies did not lead to unequal agreements, and being a female or a minority did not lead to an unfair outcome.

Presents the scientific methodology from the enlarged cybernetical perspective that recognizes the anisotropy of time, the probabilistic character of natural laws, and the entry that the incomplete determinism in Nature opens to the occurrence of innovation, growth, organization, teleology communication, control, contest and freedom. The new tier to the methodological edifice that cybernetics provides stands on the earlier tiers, which go back to the Ionians (c. 500 BC). However, the new insights reveal flaws in the earlier tiers, and their removal strengthens the entire edifice. The new concepts of teleological activity and contest allow the clear demarcation of the military sciences as those whose subject matter is teleological activity involving contest. The paramount question “what ought to be done”, outside the empirical realm, is embraced by the scientific methodology. It also embraces the cognitive sciences that ask how the human mind is able to discover, and how the sequence of discoveries might converge to a true description of reality.

This paper aims to critically examine through a knowledge management lens the existing “art” of public policy making, suggesting instead an approach intended to improve knowledge processes and reduce unintended injurious consequences of legislating.

Drawing on pragmatic philosophy and limited government precedents, the authors identify and recommend the implementation of a prospective legislative impact statement requirement by and for the U.S. Congress. They suggest the development and the potential KM utility of the PLIS based on a brief case study of the 2009 American “cash for clunkers” incentive program.

The authors conclude that development and application of such prospective legislative impact statements is feasible and that they may support the statement and testing of dynamic hypotheses relating to the prospective effects of policies under government consideration.

Pragmatic knowledge‐based scholarship is extended by integrating system dynamics and adaptive management approaches, and it acquires prominent governance relevance through this research.

Rigorous integrative government consideration of pending legislation, and ongoing assessment of consequences of enacted laws, could be systematized under this proposal.

PLIS requirement extends knowledge process over the legislating process, thereby tempering current “legislative art” practices and wisely benefiting the polity.

This paper offers a practical solution to a wicked KM problem: improving the quality of knowledge in non‐hierarchical policy‐making groups, especially those in government.

Argues that the autonomy of the Althoff administration was based on the “personal regime” of Friedrich Althoff. The public choice approach of bureaucratic behaviour reveals the basis for this autonomy: professionalism and continuity. Manageable span of control and entrepreneurship safeguarded the internal efficiency of Althoff′s agency. The information network of Althoff allowed the German scientific community to play its role as defined by the economics of inquiry. The auditing procedures of the community, that allow for technical and allocative efficiency, exert such pressure on its members that it works both as a voluntary monitoring device and as an incentive structure. In order to reduce the huge monitoring costs of scientific production, adopting a bureaucratic structure for the large academic organization of the Althoff system is consistent with the arguments that transaction cost analysis provides. The principal‐agent problem that arises from the attenuation of control, characteristic of bureaucracy, was solved by the comparative information advantage and the autonomy of the Althoff administration. Property‐rights theory further suggests that the centralized autocratic managing style improved academic productivity. The efficient organization of the Althoff system (both the administration and the academic organization) constituted a major improvement for the development and recognition of German science and scholarship.

This study examines the impact of mediator style, mediation outcome, and mediator background variables on community mediation participant satisfaction and fairness perceptions along several dimensions. Our data were collected from a community mediation program located in a justice court in the Southwestern United States. During a twelve‐month period, 40 mediation sessions, each involving a single mediator, were videotaped. The 108 mediation participants completed surveys assessing their perceptions of and satisfaction with their specific mediation experiences. The findings indicate important impacts of mediator facilitativeness on all perceptions and of conflict resolution success on satisfaction. Mediator experience impacted perceptions of the mediator; mediator gender and law background had no impacts.

Discusses the factors relating to the success of Friedrich Althoff as an innovator (or entrepreneur), within the nineteenth century bureaucratic Prussian public administration, that enabled him to be the driving force in the building of the university system. These include acquiring control over resources (salesmanship); the political skills of evaluation, of dealing with superiors in the system, and negotiating with other departments and other powerful groups (Althoff had to bypass hierarchical constraints from above); mastery of his own field, tight management; and an immense capacity for work. The prevailing stereotypes of bureaucracy have no room for the public entrepreneur who succeeds only by usurping the role of bureaucracy within his own private realm.