Chapter 2 has analysed the literature of the two fields in relation to the origins, philosophical approach, conceptualisation, definition and mediation in the two fields. The literature provides strong evidence of there being a divide in each of these areas, and that it is impacting on the transfer of knowledge and
information between these fields.
The literature review also highlighted the need to test this analysis by gathering primary data to examine whether there is direct evidence of this divide. This chapter draws on three different data sources in order to test the analysis that there is a divide and to deepen the understanding of the impact of this divide on theory and practice. This combination of methods draws out information on theory and practice through knowledge testing and data on self-representation. This process and the location of the points of data extraction are represented by the following graphic:
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‘Attitude and Identity’ refer to the combination of how we view things and who we believe we are. These factors impact fundamentally on how we self-identify and how we consciously and unconsciously present ourselves to others.
‘Knowledge’ is shorthand here for ‘things we know we know’; for instance, which books we have read and which authors we have heard of.
The first data source is the generational analysis of authors provided in the literature review. This research involved in this analysis was extensive, requiring data gathering on the academic qualifications, publications and key career landmarks of each of the authors included. This generational analysis is used to triangulate the data drawn from the questionnaire of CR and ADR practitioners. The second data source was generated by the mediator questionnaire and provides insight into how a sample of individuals operating in the CR or ADR contexts self-identify, how they conceptualise mediation, their knowledge of the literature of the two fields, and who they identify as key influencers in theory and practice.
In order to interpret these findings more fully and to triangulate the information gathered, a third data source was used in the form of research of publicly available online information about the questionnaire respondents and about mediation organisations and other relevant bodies. This involved looking at their own web-sites and publications, and/or those of the organisations for which they work, for evidence of how they present themselves, or are presented by others, with their consent.
Data generation summary
The previous chapter presented the methodology behind each of these data collection methods, including detailed information on sampling and data analysis. Before getting into the results a brief recap of the most important information on the data generation will be provided.
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The emphasis in both fields was the English-speaking context (UK, USA and South Africa), but with boundary-crossing experience present in the profile of many (whether between these countries or third countries). The aim was to get some cross-section in terms of age (ca. 35-80) in both cohorts, with the
challenge of substantive practical verifiable experience being a challenge at the lower end of the age range. Despite the lack of gender parity in either field, near gender parity was achieved in the sample, to try to contribute to breaking the pattern of women’s voices being faded out through justifications of
‘representative sampling’54.
The sampling criteria can therefore be summarised as follows:
• Externally verifiable practice experience in track II/NGO/Commercial mediation
• Externally verifiable engagement in writing/teaching/training on mediation • To maximise the age range represented in the sample
• To get as close to gender parity as possible
• Inclusion primarily of practitioners and scholar-practitioners
• Inclusion of mono-lingual and multi-lingual respondents in both ADR & CR samples
• Experience and knowledge of the English-speaking contexts of either ADR or CR.
The questionnaire responses do not ask directly whether the mediator
respondents experience the impact of the divide in the way that I describe in the later chapters of this PhD, or about whether they believe that information can or can’t be transferred across the boundary. This would of course be interesting but is way beyond the scope of this study and its importance will be returned to in the concluding chapter.
54 Even traditional methodology endorses over-sampling matters of interest.
See for instance the work of Philip Hauser Kitagawa, E. M. and Hauser, P. M. (1973) Differential mortality in the United States: a study in socioeconomic epidemiology. Vital and health statistics monographs. Cambridge, Mass.,: Harvard University Press..
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The response rate highlights the success of both the sampling strategy and the instrument design:
Questionnaires sent 37
Number of respondents 28
No of CR respondents 12
No of ADR respondents 16
Overall Response rate (CR/ADR) 75/76%
The questions were:
First: Self-definition: Academic; Practitioner; Scholar-Practitioner; Other: . The second question was a sample author list, with options given in a grid: “read; skimmed; heard of; not heard of”. The authors were:
Boulding (1988) Boulle & Nesic (2001) Burton (1990a);
Bush & Folger (2005); Curle (1986);
Fisher & Ury (1981) Ronald J. Fisher (1997) Galtung (2002);
Hope (2009) Lederach (2005)
Mackie, Miles & Marsh (1995) Mayer (2009);
Miall, Woodhouse, Ramsbotham (2005);
Mnookin (2000);
Moffitt & Bordone (2005) Richmond (2008); Rifkin (2001); Rosenberg (1999); Touval & Zartman (1985)
Third and Fourth: “Authors I would cite as being influential in my work on
mediation:” and “Authors I would cite as having actually influenced my practice:” For simplicity the first question has been referred to as ‘Theory’ and the second as ‘Practice’ however, this ambiguity is accounted for in the interpretation of the results.
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Five and Six: If you were to put mediation approaches on a spectrum, what the ends would be? If mediation practice is part of what you do, where would you place yourself on this spectrum?
The Divergence and convergence of ADR and CR
The results of the questionnaire generally support the hypothesis that there is a divide between the two fields, but that it is not a complete and total split. There is evidence of boundary crossing between the fields in terms of theory,
particularly amongst respondents whose responses indicate a high level of reading. This supports the hypothesis that the information used in the different fields is, at least in part, relevant to both sides of the divide.
There is evidence that the divide is particularly marked in the practice context is highlighted by the results of the questionnaire in relation to ‘authors who have influenced my practice’ and on the spectrum of approaches to practice and self- location.
The following section is structured in five sections. There is an initial analysis of the sample demographics and the questions this analysis raise around
professional background and gender. The following section that looks at the self-definition and the scaling questions and draws out the variations in self- perception of mediators from the two fields and conceptualisation of mediation. This is followed by analysis of the results of the sample author list question, the influences named by the respondents with a final section that meshes these results with the generational author table first used in the literature review. The final section of this chapter connects this information with the results of the analysis of the historical connections between key authors and publications in the two fields, in particular Roger Fisher and John Burton.
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Demographic Analysis of the Mediator Sample
Demographic information on the respondents was verified from information that they or the organisations they work for make publicly available. This information has been handled to ensure the protection of anonymity. The demographics of the two groups of respondents demonstrate different patterns that are indicative of elements of division and cultural difference between the two fields. The first part of this section will present these findings. It is important to reinforce the limitations of the data given the size and specificity of the sample.
Gender
There was a deliberate choice to sample in a way that got as close to gender parity as possible, but without compromising any of the other sample criteria. The result is a small male majority in both samples, and the m/f balance within the CR and ADR samples is similar:
Fig. 3: ADR/CR Respondent M/F demographics
No. %
CR Male 7 58%
Female 5 42%
ADR Male 9 56%
Female 7 44%
As previously mentioned, the sampling deliberately included a range of seniority in age and it is worth noting that age and status do not necessarily correspond to the level of practical mediation experience. If I had selected only on the basis of age and status the demographic would have looked rather different as is evident from the senior, high status mediators selected for exposure in “Kings of Peace, Pawns of War” (Martin 2006) and in “Mediators on Mediation” (Newmark and Monaghan 2005) or CEDR Chambers:
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ADR (CEDR Chambers) Male 13 76%
Female 4 24%
CR (Martin) Male 6 100%
Female 0 0%
This highlights the obvious lack of anything approaching gender parity in fields that are not (in principle) averse to the idea of equality and, in the case of much of the mainstream CR work vociferously protest against oppression and claim emancipatory intent. This combines with the many conversations I have been involved with in both fields where people have explained to me (presumably based on gender role-assumptions) that women are ‘natural’ mediators, thus rather reinforcing the results of studies of prejudice that highlight that positive prejudice does nothing to counter negative prejudice in practice (Morrissett and Stuhlmacher 2006).
Just under half of the female respondents (particularly some of the highest status and most experienced) included informal apologetic messages, indicating that their opinions/response/experience couldn’t be particularly
helpful! I didn’t receive a single response from any of the male mediators of this type. This observations of gendered behaviour in terms of verbally taking credit and status in relation to action and professional competence(Tannen 1995); a question that would be worthy of further exploration given the aspiration to support gender empowerment and inclusion in conflict situations is theoretically supported in both ADR (Carroll 2013) and CR (Brank 2013).
Professional Background
In the process of building the CR generational table and research on the backgrounds of the generation involved in Conflict in Society (De Reuck and Knight 1966) the complete absence of lawyers, in an otherwise very
interdisciplinary group, was striking. Professional background was not used as one of the sampling criteria for the questionnaire respondents, making the fact that the respondents clearly reflect this division interesting.
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Unlike the generation involved in the 1966 generation, the CR respondents in this study almost all have postgraduate qualifications in peace and/or
development studies in some form. However, looking at their undergraduate backgrounds, well over half of the respondents from the CR field come from a range of social science backgrounds, with the rest ranging across engineering, humanities and language backgrounds:
Fig. 5: CR Analysis of Gender and Professional Background No. %
Non-Lawyer 12 100%
Social Science (Peace Studies; IR; Anthropology) 7 58%
History 1 8%
Planning / Engineering 2 16%
Languages / European Studies 2 16%
Law 0 0%
Given the importance of international law within the context of IR and the degree to which interdisciplinarity is considered fundamental to CR
(Ramsbotham et al. 2011) it is interesting that whilst there is a wide diversity of the undergraduate degrees there is a complete absence of practitioners hailing from a legal background.
The ADR sample presents a different profile: They representative of the author table with the overwhelming majority having a background in law (75%) with the majority of the remainder coming from social science and psychology backgrounds.
Fig. 6: ADR Analysis of Gender and Professional Background No. %
Law 12 75%
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Psychology 1 6%
Art 1 6%
This highlights the domination of ADR by lawyers and CR by social science. It also highlights that in terms of practitioner background there may be more influence on ADR by social science than there is by law on CR. Despite the small sample size this represents a highly statistical significance:
Fig. 7: Statistical significance of Professional Background
Law Other
CR 0 12
ADR 12 4
P < .001 for Fisher’s Exact and chi-square tests.
This subject is picked up again later, as it connects both with the analysis of the recognition test of the sample book list, as well as the analysis of the table of CR and ADR authors by generation.
Gender and Professional Background in ADR
If the ADR sample is analysed by professional background and gender an interesting pattern emerges. The 25% of the non-lawyer ADR cohort are split as follows by gender:
Fig. 8: ADR Analysis Gender and Professional Background
Total Non-Lawyer Respondents 4 (25% of total ADR sample)
Male Non-Lawyers 1 25%
Female Non-Lawyers 3 75%
While 25% of the overall ADR sample are non-lawyers, 75% of the non-lawyer respondents are women. Once squared with the overall numbers within the male and female cohorts the proportional result within the ADR group are very different:
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Fig. 9: ADR Professional Background by Gender
With such a small sample, any hypothesis on why this is must remain tentative. However, if this data is triangulated with data from other sources including easily publicly available information such as the proportion of women and non-
lawyers on ADR mediator provider panels55 it is possible make some tentative
suggestions:
Fig. 10: ADR Gender division of Non-lawyer Mediators
Total M/F Prop. total
Questionnaire sample Male Non-lawyers 1 9 11%
Female Non-lawyers 3 7 57%
CEDR Chambers Male Non-lawyers 2 13 15%
Female Non-lawyers 2 4 50%
My samples in both CDR and ADR include more women than seems to be common. However, in relation to the proportion of female mediators with legal and non-legal backgrounds it seems to be fairly representative of the
proportions of one provider’s panel.
Whilst all the non-lawyer female mediators in my respondent group and on the CEDR chambers group have a wide range of mediator experience, they are almost all promoted for workplace/employment work. Both these areas could be
55 The simplest publicly verifiable data available to support such assertions are
the mediator panels available on websites such as www.cedr.com cited above.
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 Male Female ADR Proportion of Non-lawyer to Lawyer respondents Non-lawyer Lawyer
Proportion of male non- lawyer respondents
11% Proportion of female
non-lawyer respondents
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characterised within the context of commercial mediation as the closest thing to ‘women’s work’; in other words, specialisms that are considered more
acceptable areas for women generally and non-lawyers to operate in (Carroll
2013) (Morrissett and Stuhlmacher 2006)56.
This is despite the fact that employment law it is just as much a specialist area of law (including the use of tribunals rather than ‘normal’ courts) as construction, IP, clinical negligence, as well as the fact that mediation parties generally have lawyers present at mediation. In other words, mediation in the ADR field
generally requires a level of relevant legal knowledge, and this is no less the case for employment than for other areas of practice.
The focus and sampling of this study does not allow firm conclusions given the results of the work done in the context of peace keeping (Karim and Beardsley 2017) to mention one example that suggests the same sort of boundaries being imposed implicitly on the activity and assumed competence of women in the area of mediation. The practical experience and impact of the influence of gender and age assumptions is picked up in the autoethnographic episode “You’re the Mediator?”.
Given legislation against gender discrimination and the predominance of
lawyers it is fairly rare for people to run the risk of flagrantly and explicitly saying that women are not suited to other types of mediation. In practice, even where there is considerable evidence of expertise and experience in other fields a range of mediators (both female and male) have confirmed this to me on an anonymous basis. However, in order to have a true and representative idea of
56 There is little that demonstrates this directly, but oblique evidence in writing:
Whilst Carroll she doesn’t explicitly mention workplace and employment, these are areas associated with ‘emotional’ content. Morrissett’s study demonstrates different perceptions of males and females as mediators and the impact of stereotyping. She also highlights the lack of research on mediation. Consistent casual stereotyping to me, and other female mediators of the ‘oh yes, well women are good at dealing with emotional cases; men are better at the heavy commercial stuff’ are still pretty routine.
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the scale and nature of this problem data needs to gathered on a different basis and scale, and of course in a way that makes disclosure safe.
Demographic Analysis: Conclusions
The professional background of the two cohorts of CR and ADR professionals confirm the hypothesis of a divide between the fields. This is indicated by the overwhelming domination of the ADR cohort by those with a legal background, particularly amongst male mediators, and a complete absence of those with a legal background from the CR cohort. However, the presence of social
scientists in both cohorts suggests that there may be elements of transfer in the two fields and that it is a divide rather than a complete rift.
The sampling criteria attempt to bring out the female presence in these fields, despite the evidence that they have both been very male dominated. This point is picked up again in relation to the sample author list and the generational literature analysis later in this chapter. An area for further research which emerges out of the analysis of this sample is that whilst women are having some success in entering both fields, they remain seriously underrepresented at the higher levels. Some of the analysis in relation to the ADR cohort suggests that women are being contained within gendered boundaries in relation to their practice. There is enough evidence to suggest that issues around gendered restriction are worthy of serious further research. This is particularly the case given the general aspiration of both fields not to be agents of oppression. This study cannot draw conclusions on ethnic identity, other than to note the reality of woeful underrepresentation. Two of the sixteen ADR mediators being from ethnic minorities is probably, sadly, an overrepresentation in terms of overall mediator demographics. The CR cohort does not include any ethnic minority mediators; reflecting my experience of there being involvement of ‘local mediators’ in the ‘field’ context, but little diversity (in comparison to national demographics) amongst the UK/US CR practitioners.
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Self-definition: Scholar, Practitioner, Academic, Scholar-Practitioner The hypothesis was that the divide would be evidenced by the way the CR and ADR cohorts would identify themselves. As mentioned the questionnaire gave them the choice of Academic, Scholar-Practitioner, Practitioner, Other and their responses were triangulated with research of publicly available information on the respondents to see how they, or the organisation they work for, present them. It was thought that the majority of the CR cohort would choose the ‘scholar-practitioner’ label as it is a common term that carries status within the CR context. It was expected that the majority of the ADR cohort would select