Designing Dispute Resolution Systems
How to build organizational and institutional systems that resolve conflicts efficiently, fairly, and before they escalate.
From Resolving Disputes to Designing Systems
Most conflict resolution training focuses on individual disputes — how to mediate this disagreement, how to negotiate that deal. But organizations, institutions, and societies face recurring conflicts, and resolving them one at a time is like treating symptoms while ignoring the disease. Dispute resolution system design (DSD) takes a step back and asks: how do we build systems that handle conflicts efficiently, fairly, and at the lowest possible cost before they escalate?
The field was pioneered by William Ury, Jeanne Brett, and Stephen Goldberg in their 1988 book 'Getting Disputes Resolved.' They studied the US coal mining industry, where wildcat strikes and grievances were constant, and proposed redesigning the dispute resolution system rather than mediating individual grievances. The result was a dramatic reduction in work stoppages. The same principles apply to universities, corporations, governments, and international organizations.