Systematic Analysis in Dispute Resolution

(Hardback)

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Description

The burgeoning of court litigation and resulting pressure on the judicial system have spawned new ways for attorneys and their clients to resolve disputes quickly and at a lower cost. Alternative dispute resolution is one important way of doing this, and this book explores its theory and practice. The contributors set out to show how to clarify, understand and develop the various options available under alternative dispute resolution, and how to evaluate the probable outcomes. Among the tools available to facilitate dispute resolution are microcomputer-based, rule-based expert systems and, for specific fields of dispute, decision-aiding software. The editors delineate several ways in which participants in a dispute win or lose. The most desirable are the super-optimum solutions in which all sides come out ahead of their best expectations. They argue that "win-win" solutions are not as desirable as would seem at first glance, since parties come out ahead only in relation to their worst expectations. Subject matter for resolution methods includes disputes involving family members, neighbourhoods, merchants-consumer, management-labour, and legislation and foreign countries.

Author Bio

STUART S. NAGEL directs the Policy Studies Organization and is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of Public Administration and Decision-Aiding Software (Greenwood Press, 1990), Decision-Aiding Software and Legal Decision-Making (Quorum, 1989), and Policy Studies: Integration and Evaluation (Praeger, 1988). MIRIAM K. MILLS was Professor of Organizational Science at the School of Industrial Management at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark, New Jersey. She passed away in March, 1992. Co-author of Multi-Criteria Methods in Alternative Dispute Resolution (Quorum, 1990) and the editor of Conflict Resolution and Public Policy (Greenwood Press, 1990), her work will be continued and expanded by the Miriam K. Mills Center for Super-Optimizing Research and Developing Nations at the University of Illinois.