As
I have previously written, bullying is a hot topic today. Cleaning House and Cleaning Up Our Acts - Anti-Bullying
Legislation, and Bullying Legislation, Revisited. As such,
it is natural for alternative dispute resolution (ADR) practitioners to move into this field. However, caution should be
used in doing so, and practitioners should consider in each case whether
mediation is appropriate and, if so, what it should look like.
In
the Fall 2011 issue of the ACR Conflict Resolution Quarterly, Vol. 29 No. 1,
Moira Jenkins asks Is Mediation Suitable
for Complaints of Workplace Bullying? Although she herself does not appear
to come to any firm conclusions, the article raises a number of helpful points
to be considered by managers and individual ADR practitioners consider the
issue. First, as Ms. Jenkins observes,
bullying is often not well defined, and in the workplace bullying may be
confused with a number of other activities that are similar but nonetheless
distinct.
