Getting Disputes Resolved: Designing Systems to Cut the Costs of Conflict

by William Ury, Jeanne M. Brett, Stephen B. Goldberg

Build Conflict Control Into Your OrganizationRenowned mediator William Ury offers tested guidelines for designing a dispute resolution system to handle conflicts effectively on an ongoing basis. He explains how to diagnose and correct problems in an existing system or create and implement a new system where one does not exist. His four-phase process includes specific advice on involving adverse parties in diagnosing current problems, designing the system, and overcoming opposition to change. The result is a win-win formula for putting a system in place that contains the costs associated with conflict by addressing them as they arise.

201 pages, Paperback

First published November 25, 1988

About the author

William Ury is an American author, academic, anthropologist, and negotiation expert. He co-founded the Harvard Program on Negotiation. Additionally, he helped found the International Negotiation Network with former President Jimmy Carter. Ury is the co-author of Getting to Yes with Roger Fisher, which set out the method of principled negotiation and established the idea of the best alternative to a negotiated agreement (BATNA) within negotiation theory.

Reviews

[Chad]

While this book makes an extremely important contribution to the field of dispute systems design, it is at times mind-numbingly boring.

[Lizzy]

I was not inclined to be receptive, but it turns out to be a pretty smart book with some good stories about coal miners.