Applying Mediation in Organisations

The dominant tradition in industrial relations has been that of power bargaining. Here, management and employee representatives meet to contest a number of issues on work conditions. Each side has a firm position and seeks to win at the expense of the other. This tradition grew out of the bitter struggles between the owners and employees during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. We wish to compare this with a joint problem solving approach and the role mediators can have in these processes.