Special Number in Volume 22, 2011`Alternative Dispute Resolution, Practices, Trends and Effects

摘要

A series of trends in the international environment, including globalization, expandingemployment legislation, the advent of HRM and high performance work organization,public-sector restructuring, partnership in the workplace and a shift away from adversarialindustrial relations, appear to be leading to significant levels of innovation in themanagement by firms of conflict involving individuals and groups, especially in Anglo-Saxon nations. The label that has become commonplace to describe these innovations is`alternative dispute resolution' (ADR): a term originally applied to such developments inindividual dispute resolution as mediation, ombudspersons, review panels, etc., but that isnow also applied to innovations in group and collective conflict management such asinterest-based bargaining, fact-finding, assisted negotiations and various forms ofmediation. No international symposium in a leading scholarly journal has soughtsystematically to examine these developments and to assess their effects. The objective ofthe special number of IJHRM is to address this gap in the literature by presenting the workof scholars in this area to the global HR community.