Third Party Interventions: Implications of Cultural Context

Abstract

In the last three decades, there has been a growing acceptance of the use of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) procedures in lieu of litigation for business and other types of disputes (Coltri, 2004), as well as intra-organizational disputes (Brown, 1983). With this acceptance has come a wide variety of third party ADR procedures: some of these are traditional and commonly used for business disputes and labor-management relations; others are novel and tend to be used for specific types of disputes. In this paper, we first describe selected key criteria to consider when evaluating third party procedures and explore the impact of culture on perceptions of these criteria. We then describe a variety of third party procedures and discuss why particular cultures might have differential preferences across procedures. We finish with a discussion of practical implications and ideas for future research.