Mediation: Understanding a Constructive Conflict Management Tool in the Workplace / La mediación: una herramienta de gestión constructiva del conflicto en el lugar de trabajo

Mediation becomes relevant nowadays as a way to manage conflicts in the workplace in a nonjudicial way, preventing costly, extensive, and unsatisfying legal procedures. This study tries to systematize the more recent research about mediation, showing the main challenges, questions, and findings. Research suggests the importance of integrating the organizational and societal context in the study of mediation, the use of efficiency, equity, and voice objectives for evaluating mediation effectiveness, and taking into account a contingency approach in mediator strategies. There is an important gap between the large development of professional practice in mediation and the few systematic studies on this topic. This paper offers a model that considers current research and practice for mediation effectiveness. This model could be used to focus the orientation of scholars, practitioners, and governments in search of new developments in the design of mediation. Future research could explore specific combinations of these dimensions to analyze sectors, organizations, or cases of mediation.(AU)

La mediación está adquiriendo relevancia hoy en día como una forma extrajudicial de gestionar los conflictos, evitando procedimientos legales costosos, largos e insatisfactorios. Este estudio trata de sistematizar la investigación más reciente sobre la mediación, mostrando los principales retos, cuestiones y conclusiones. La investigación sugiere la importancia de integrar el contexto organizativo y social en el estudio de la mediación, el uso de objetivos de eficiencia, equidad y voz para evaluar la eficacia de la mediación y tener en cuenta un enfoque contingente en las estrategias de las personas mediadoras. Existe una importante brecha entre el gran desarrollo de la práctica profesional de la mediación y la escasez de estudios sistemáticos sobre este tema. Este artículo ofrece un modelo que tiene en cuenta tanto la investigación como el ejercicio práctico para entender cómo se producen las mediaciones eficaces. Este modelo podría utilizarse para orientar a la academia, el ejercicio profesional y a los gobiernos en la búsqueda de nuevos desarrollos en el diseño de la mediación. Las investigaciones futuras podrían explorar combinaciones específicas de estas dimensiones para analizar sectores, organizaciones o casos de mediación.(AU)

Start-up conflict and hair cortisol.

Hair cortisol concentration (HCC) can be a biomarker of long-term exposure to work stress. However, research shows no consistent associations between HCC and self-reported stress. This may be due to stress being treated as a general category, without distinguishing between specific types of sources of stress, and because of a limited use of more elaborate stress assessment techniques involving intensive longitudinal designs. In this study, we analyze the relationship between perceived start-up team conflict over 11 weeks and HCC in 63 start-up team members. The results show that the level of perceived conflict is positively associated to HCC. These results draw attention to the importance of interpersonal conflict as one type of work stressors and raise awareness of its physiological effects over longer time periods in start-up teams.

The Global Trigger Tool shows that one out of seven patients suffers harm in Palestinian hospitals: challenges for launching a strategic safety plan.

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to evaluate patient safety levels in Palestinian hospitals and to provide guidance for policymakers involved in safety improvement efforts. DESIGN: Retrospective review of hospitalized patient records using the Global Trigger Tool. SETTING: Two large hospitals in Palestine: a referral teaching hospital and a nonprofit, non-governmental hospital. PARTICIPANTS: A total of 640 random records of discharged patients were reviewed by experienced nurses and physicians from the selected hospitals. INTERVENTION: Assessment of adverse events. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Prevalence of adverse events, their preventability and harm category. Descriptive statistics and Cohen kappa coefficients were calculated. RESULTS: One out of seven patients (91 [14.2%]) suffered harm. Fifty-four (59.3%) of these events were preventable; 64 (70.4%) resulted in temporary harm, requiring prolonged hospitalization. Good reliability was achieved among the independent reviewers in identifying adverse events. The Global Trigger Tool showed that adverse events in Palestinian hospitals likely occur at a rate of 20 times higher than previously reported. Although reviewers reported that detecting adverse events was feasible, we identified conditions suggesting that the tool may be challenging to use in daily practice. CONCLUSION: One out of seven patients suffers harm in Palestinian hospitals. Compromised safety represents serious problems for patients, hospitals and governments and should be a high priority public health issue. We argue that direct interventions should be launched immediately to improve safety. Additional costs associated with combating adverse events should be taken into consideration, especially in regions with limited resources, as in Palestine.

Perceived demands during modern military operations.

Using a cross-sectional design, this study explored operational demands during the International Security Assistance Force for Afghanistan (2009-2010) across distinct military units. A total of 1,413 Dutch soldiers, nested within four types of units (i.e., combat, combat support, service support, and command support units) filled out a 23-item self-survey in which they were asked to evaluate the extent to which they experienced operational characteristics as demanding. Exploratory factor analysis identified six underlying dimensions of demands. Multivariate analysis of variance revealed that distinct units are characterized by their own unique constellation of perceived demands, even after controlling for previous deployment experience. Most notable findings were found when comparing combat units to other types of units. These insights can be used to better prepare different types of military units for deployment, and support them in the specific demands they face during deployment.

Motivated information processing, strategic choice, and the quality of negotiated agreement.

The authors tested a motivated information-processing model of negotiation: To reach high joint outcomes, negotiators need a deep understanding of the task, which requires them to exchange information and to process new information systematically. All this depends on social motivation, epistemic motivation (EM), and their interaction. Indeed, when EM (manipulated by holding negotiators process accountability or not) was high rather than low and prosocial rather than proself, negotiators recall more cooperative than competitive tactics (Experiment 1), had more trust, and reached higher joint outcomes (Experiment 2). Experiment 3 showed that under high EM, negotiators who received cooperative, rather than competitive, tactics reached higher joint outcomes because they engaged in more problem solving. Under low EM, negotiators made more concessions and reached low joint outcomes. Implications for negotiation theory and for future work in this area are discussed.

Job resources buffer the impact of job demands on burnout.

This study tested and refined the job demands-resources model, demonstrating that several job resources play a role in buffering the impact of several job demands on burnout. A total of 1,012 employees of a large institute for higher education participated in the study. Four demanding aspects of the job (e.g., work overload, emotional demands) and 4 job resources (e.g., autonomy, performance feedback) were used to test the central hypothesis that the interaction between (high) demands and (low) resources produces the highest levels of burnout (exhaustion, cynicism, reduced professional efficacy). The hypothesis was rejected for (reduced) professional efficacy but confirmed for exhaustion and cynicism regarding 18 out of 32 possible 2-way interactions (i.e., combinations of specific job demands and resources).