Back to Basics Series: Ghostbusters & Me

Editor's Note: The Master Mediator is taking a break from his in‐depth series on neuroscience and the psychological factors and cognitive biases that may affect dispute resolution. As Bob Creo's earliest columns, describing and discussing mediation room techniques and practice issues, appeared only on the CPR website, he has agreed to reprise and update them for Alternatives, beginning with last month's issue, in a new “Back to Basics” series. Last month's column covered the concept of satisfactory compromise, while this one addresses “ghostbusting” in mediation. Future columns will cover such essentials as terms of reference and constructing settlements.     

Back to Basics: Legos and Me

Editor's Note: Master Mediator columnist Bob Creo has taken a break in the past two issues of Alternatives from his focus on neuroscience, psychological factors and cognitive biases that affect dispute resolution to revisit his past. He has returned to his earliest columns on mediation room techniques and practice issues—some nearly a decade old—and is reprising and updating them for a “Back to Basics” series. The articles are new to these pages, originally having appeared exclusively on the website of Alternatives' publisher, the International Institute for Conflict Prevention and Resolution. Last month's column faced “ghostbusting” in mediation—that is, dealing with the specters of “persons with influence over the outcome, but who are not physically present at the mediation session.” The November column covered the concept of satisfactory compromise. This month's column looks at the building blocks of a mediation resolution, literally. Still to come is a back‐to‐basics examination of constructing settlements.     

Quick Takes: Magic Moments

Editor's note: Alternatives columnist Bob Creo, a Pittsburgh arbitrator and mediator, has been revisiting his catalog of CPR Institute website columns, originated a decade ago, in a Back to Basics series that he has subtitled “Human Problems, Human Solutions.” These updated and expanded columns are in print for the first time, building on new concepts and knowledge. He has revisited a wide spectrum of mediation room behaviors and practices. This month's column combines two of those early efforts.     

The Mediator as Arbitrager: Asymmetry in Action

Editor's note: Alternatives columnist Bob Creo, a Pittsburgh arbitrator and mediator, has been revisiting his catalog of CPR Institute website columns, originated a decade ago, in a Back to Basics Alternatives series that he has subtitled “Human Problems, Human Solutions.” These updated and expanded columns, in print for the first time, began a year ago. He has revisited a wide spectrum of mediation room behaviors and practices. This month, he returns to the third column he wrote at www.cpradr.org , and brings it forward.     

The Theory of Settlement,in Two Words … With a Little Hollywood Help

Editor's note: Alternatives columnist Bob Creo, a Pittsburgh arbitrator and mediator, has been revisiting his catalog of CPR Institute website columns, originated a decade ago, in a Back to Basics Alternatives series that he has subtitled “Human Problems, Human Solutions.” These updated and expanded columns are in print for the first time, building on new concepts and knowledge. He has revisited a wide spectrum of mediation room behaviors and practices.     

A Brief Stroll on the Roundabout of Authenticity,Confidentiality & Impartiality

Editor's note: Alternatives columnist Bob Creo, a Pittsburgh arbitrator and mediator, has been revisiting his catalog of CPR Institute website columns, originated a decade ago, in a Back to Basics Alternatives series that he has subtitled “Human Problems, Human Solutions.” These updated and expanded columns are in print for the first time, building on new concepts and knowledge. He has revisited a wide spectrum of mediation room behaviors and practices.     

The Mediation Field,in Theory and Practice

Editor's note: Alternatives columnist Bob Creo, a Pittsburgh arbitrator and mediator, has been revisiting his CPR Institute website columns, originated a decade ago, in a Back to Basics Alternatives series that he has subtitled “Human Problems, Human Solutions.” These updated and expanded columns are in print for the first time, building on the original concepts with new knowledge. He has revisited a wide spectrum of mediation room behaviors and practices. This month, he returns to the sixth column he wrote at www.cpradr.org , and updates it.     

Back To Basics: The Playing Field

Editor's note: Longtime Alternatives columnist Bob Creo, a veteran Pittsburgh neutral, is revisiting his classic CPR Institute website columns of a decade ago in a Back to Basics Series that he has subtitled “Human Problems, Human Solutions.” In his recent Master Mediators columns, Creo has focused on neuroscience, psychological factors and cognitive biases that affect dispute resolution. These updated Back to Basics columns, in print for the first time, began in November, revisiting mediation‐room techniques and practice issues. Still to come is an examination of the issues involved in getting to closure.     

Back to Basics: Moscow Rules!

Editor's note: Longtime Alternatives columnist Bob Creo, a veteran Pittsburgh neutral, is revisiting his classic CPR Institute website columns of a decade ago in a Back to Basics Series that he has subtitled “Human Problems, Human Solutions.” In his more‐recent Master Mediator columns, Creo has focused on neuroscience, psychological factors and cognitive biases that affect dispute resolution. These updated Back to Basics columns, in print for the first time, began in November, revisiting mediation‐room techniques and practice issues. This month, the focus is on.     

Back To Basics: Rags and Me!

Editor's note: Veteran Alternatives columnist Bob Creo, a Pittsburgh neutral, is revisiting his classic CPR Institute website columns of a decade ago in a Back to Basics Series that he has subtitled “Human Problems, Human Solutions.” In his recent Master Mediators columns, Creo has focused on neuroscience, psychological factors and cognitive biases that affect dispute resolution. These updated Back to Basics columns, in print for the first time, began in November, revisiting mediation‐room techniques and practice issues. This month, the focus is on getting to closure.     

Back to Basics: An ADR Intervention that Converts a Legal Problem to a Human Solution

Editor's note: Longtime Alternatives columnist Bob Creo, a veteran Pittsburgh neutral, is revisiting his classic CPR Institute website columns of a decade ago in a Back to Basics Series that he has subtitled “Human Problems, Human Solutions.” In his recent Master Mediators columns, Creo has focused on neuroscience, psychological factors and cognitive biases that affect dispute resolution. These updated Back to Basics columns, in print for the first time, began in November, revisiting mediation‐room techniques and practice issues. This month, the focus is on getting to closure.     

Back to Basics: Primates and Me

Editor's note: Longtime Alternatives columnist Bob Creo, a veteran Pittsburgh neutral, is revisiting his classic CPR Institute website columns of a decade ago in a Back to Basics Series that he has subtitled “Human Problems, Human Solutions.” These updated and expanded columns, in print for the first time, began in November. He has revisited and re‐examined mediation‐room techniques and practice issues. This month, the focus is on behavior common to primates, and how humans can learn from their ape, chimp, and monkey cousins.     

Out in the Mediation Field,and on the Mediation Carpet

Editor's note: Longtime Alternatives columnist Bob Creo, a veteran Pittsburgh neutral, is revisiting his classic CPR Institute website columns of a decade ago in a Back to Basics Series that he has subtitled “Human Problems, Human Solutions.” These updated and expanded columns, in print for the first time, began late last year. He has revisited and re‐examined mediation‐room techniques and practice issues. This month, he returns to the first column he wrote at www.cpradr.org a decade ago, and brings it forward.     

Back To Basics: I Mediate,Therefore I Am?

Editor's note: Longtime Alternatives columnist Bob Creo, a veteran Pittsburgh neutral, is revisiting his classic CPR Institute website columns of a decade ago in a Back to Basics Series that he has subtitled “Human Problems, Human Solutions.” In his recent Master Mediators columns, Creo has focused on neuroscience, psychological factors and cognitive biases that affect dispute resolution. These updated Back to Basics columns, in print for the first time, began in November, revisiting mediation‐room techniques and practice issues. This month, the focus is on how the humanity and values of the mediator align with the process and the participants.     

Theory and Practice and the Neutral's Persona

Editor's note: Longtime Alternatives columnist Bob Creo, a veteran Pittsburgh neutral, is revisiting his classic CPR Institute website columns of a decade ago in a Back to Basics Series that he has subtitled “Human Problems, Human Solutions.” These updated and expanded columns, in print for the first time, began late last year. He has revisited and re‐examined mediation‐room techniques and practice issues. This month, he returns to the second column he wrote at www.cpradr.org a decade ago, and brings it forward.     

Improving mediation quality: You,too, can do this in your area

Following up on the recent release of the ABA Section of Dispute Resolution's mediation quality report, task force member and regular Alternatives contributor John Lande, of Columbia, Mo., discusses how to use the report's “Tool Kit for Improving the Quality of Mediation in Your Geographic or Practice Area.” The tool kit is a step‐by‐step guide to holding focus groups that analyze the nitty gritty of mediation work, and producing a study that allows for application.     

Assessing the Spectrum of Primate Behaviors To Produce a Path for Business Conflict Resolution

Editor's note: Longtime Alternatives columnist Bob Creo, a veteran Pittsburgh neutral, is revisiting his classic CPR Institute website columns of a decade ago in a Back to Basics Series that he has subtitled “Human Problems, Human Solutions.” These updated and expanded columns, in print for the first time, began late last year. He has revisited and re‐examined mediation‐room techniques and practice issues. Last month, he focused on the science behind the behaviors common to primates, and how humans can learn about addressing conflict from their ape, chimp, and monkey cousins. In this column, he turns to placing these behaviors against mediation process points, and translates them into a 10‐point checklist for ADR success. He also provides a comprehensive resource list.     

Replacing the mediator orientation grids,again: Proposing a ‘new new grid system’

The mediation profession's standard for assessment is revised, updated and—maybe—finalized. Leonard L. Riskin, of Columbia, Mo., who debuted his “Mediator Orientation Grid” in these pages a decade ago, revisits his process tool, which has now grown into a “New New Grid System.”.     

It's more than just ‘med arb’: The case for ‘transitional arbitration’

Converting to mediation from arbitration gives most people the willies, even when it's not a new experience. Gerald F. Phillips, of Los Angeles, describes how he embraces his mediator's role in “transitional arbitration,” and how combined processes can work.     

Hospitability: The Communicative Architecture of Humanitarian Securitization at Europe's Borders

This paper explores the communicative architecture of reception at the peak of Europe's 2015–2016 “migration crisis.” Drawing on fieldwork at one of Europe's outer borders—the Greek island of Chios—the paper examines the border as a site where refugee and migrant reception takes place and where the parameters of Europe's ethico-political response to the “crisis” are set. The paper demonstrates that the continent's double requirement of security and care produces a new and highly ambivalent moral order, hospitability. Constituted through techno-symbolic networks of mediation, hospitability reaffirms dominant theorizations of the border as an order of power and exclusion but goes beyond these in highlighting micro-connections of solidarity that simultaneously coexist with and attempt to challenge this order.