Every organization generates chronic conflicts, and mediators are increasingly being asked to resolve these conflicts, provide conflict coaching, assist with organizational change, and redesign the systems, structures, relationships, processes, and "conflict cultures" that contribute to costly, chronic, and intractable conflicts.
As a result of the pandemic, increasing demands for diversity, and significant economic, political, and environmental upheaval, organizations are experiencing rapid shifts and deep transformations in the nature and experience of work, and the expectations of employees, customers, and society as a whole. These shifts are generating new and systemic forms of conflict that present fresh challenges and opportunities for mediators, coaches, consultants, and conflict resolvers everywhere.
This book was designed to assist aspiring mediators and organizational leaders in developing skills in conflict resolution and systems design, and to aid schools, community groups, small businesses, non-profits, corporations, labor unions, social justice organizations, government agencies, and political advocacy groups, as well as couples and families, in preventing and resolving conflicts, and reducing their costs. It is based on the lectures and accompanying materials for a course the authors designed and teach at Pepperdine University School of Law, Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution, in Malibu, California. The course provides practical frameworks for analyzing and mediating the emotional, interpersonal, and systemic sources of organizational conflict in public and private sector organizations, including corporations, government agencies, nonprofits, work teams, and family businesses. It assists participants in becoming organizational mediators and conflict coaches, and in developing and expanding their capacity to use facilitation, group dialogue, conflict resolution systems design, management theory, leadership and structural dynamics to resolve workplace conflicts. It helps mediators identify preventative and transformational opportunities and discover how to use conflicts to encourage systemic improvement, personal growth, organization learning, strategic change, emotional healing, forgiveness, and transformation.
Goldsmith, Joan: - Kenneth Cloke is Director of the Center for Dispute Resolution and for over forty years has been a mediator, arbitrator, facilitator, coach, consultant and trainer, specializing in communication, negotiation, and resolving complex multi-party disputes, including marital, divorce, family, community, grievance and workplace disputes, collective bargaining negotiations, organizational and school conflicts, sexual harassment, discrimination, and public policy disputes; and designing preventative conflict resolution systems. His facilitation, coaching, consulting, and training practice includes work with leaders of public, private and non-profit organizations on effective communications, dialogue, collaborative negotiation, relationship and team building, conflict resolution, leadership development, strategic planning, designing systems, culture and organizational change. His university teaching includes mediation, law, history, political science, conflict studies, urban studies, and other topics at several colleges and universities. He is or has recently been an Adjunct Professor at Pepperdine University School of Law; Southern Methodist University; USC, Global Negotiation Insight Institute at Harvard Law School; Omega Institute; Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Cape Cod Institute; University of Amsterdam ADR Institute; Saybrook University; Massey University (New Zealand). He has done conflict resolution work in Armenia, Australia, Austria, Bahamas, Brazil, Canada, China, Cuba, Denmark, England, Georgia, Greece, India, Ireland, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Puerto Rico, Scotland, Slovenia, Spain, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, USSR, and Zimbabwe. He is founder and first President of Mediators Beyond Borders. He served as an Administrative Law Judge for the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board and the Public Employment Relations Board, a Factfinder for the Public Employment Relations Board, and a Judge Pro Tem for the Superior Court of Los Angeles. He has been an Arbitrator and Mediator for over forty years in labor management disputes, and is a member of a number of arbitration panels. He received his B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley; J.D. from U.C. Berkeley's Boalt Law School; Ph.D. from U.C.L.A.; LLM from U.C.L.A. Law School; and did post-doctoral work at Yale University School of Law. He is a graduate of the National Judicial College and has taken graduate level courses in a variety of subjects.
