Introduction

Abstract

Cycles of conflict and reconciliation, as all recognise, have long been part of the fabric of life. Jared Diamond (2013) explains how small-scale traditional societies viewed other peoples (clans and tribes) in a threefold manner. These other groups were known as friends, as enemies or as strangers, and strangers were initially perceived as being potential enemies. When conflict arose between individuals from neighbouring friendly clans, reconciliation was highly valued, since relationships with neighbours were long-term; these individuals lived their lives mostly within the same small geographic area. Furthermore, if feelings of hurt could not be ameliorated and mutually resolved, disputes would likely persist and fester. Given the closely knitted relationships inside each clan, feelings of hurt would have been likely to spread within the clan. Hence, a serious argument between two individuals from neighbouring clans could easily escalate into a dangerous destabilisation of relationships between whole clans. Thus, the mediated resolution of conflict was important in traditional societies for these two reasons, because inter-clan relationships were often life-long and individuals within any clan were embedded in strong networks of intra-group relationships. In the modern workplace, people are also bound into extended-term relationships, both intra-group and inter-group, and so the resolution of conflict, in which good relationships are recovered, may be expected to be as valuable today as it ever was amongst traditional societies. In the past three decades there has been a spread of formal mediation practice from the community and court sectors to many other fields (Beer and Stief 1997, p. 3; Kressel 2006, p. 726), including the workplace. In the UK, contemporary workplace mediation practice seems to have transferred from community and family sectors. Workplace mediation also seems to have roots in related forms of conciliation that arose, in the UK and the USA in the early to mid-twentieth century, out of governmental industrial relations policies.