Lisa Blomgren Amsler

Direct Public Engagement in Local Government

Public engagement is an umbrella term that encompasses numerous methods for bringing people together to address issues of public importance. In this article, we focus on direct public engagement in local government, exploring what we know and proposing areas where more research is needed. We first define direct public engagement and distinguish it from related concepts and terms. We then introduce a simple framework for exploring variations in direct public engagement at the local level. Next, we use this framework to examine the extant literature on why, how, and to what effect direct public engagement in local government is used. Finally, we identify gaps in the literature and propose a research agenda for the future.

Decision Making in Employment and Labor Arbitration

This experimental study examined the labor and employment arbitration decisions of four groups of arbitrators: (1) employment arbitrators who resolve disputes involving nonunion employees, (2) labor arbitrators who arbitrate cases in which an employee is represented by a union, (3) arbitrators in the National Academy of Arbitrators (NAA), and (4) students as a comparison of non-arbitrator decision makers with experienced arbitrators. A 2 x 2 x 4 factorial design was used, crossing arbitrator group with discipline standard and sex of the grievant. Results indicate that employment arbitrators reinstate the grievant significantly less frequently than other arbitrators; however, the findings also reveal that all arbitrators make more favorable decisions under a just-cause standard than under the newer META standard of discipline.

Mediation's Impact on Formal Discrimination Complaint Filing: Before and After the Redress Program at the U.S. Postal Serevice

This article examines a natural field experiment in mediation of employment disputes at the United States Postal Service. Theory suggests that early mediation will lead to earlier, more durable settlements and transaction cost savings. Implementation of the mediation program resulted in a significant decrease in the number of formal discrimination complaints. A well designed employment dispute mediation program can resolve disputes at an earlier stage in the administrative process, and thereby reduce the number of formal complaints filed.

Collaborative Governance and Collaborating Online: The Open Government Initiative in the United States

On his first full day in office, President Barack Obama signed an Executive Memorandum committing to create ‘an unprecedented level of openness in Government’ and ‘a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration’ to strengthen democracy, ensure the public trust, and ‘promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government’ (White House, 2009). The theory behind this Open Government Initiative (OGI) was threefold: transparency promotes accountability and provides information for the public, participation enhances government effectiveness and the quality of decision making, and collaboration engages Americans in the work of their government. This movement has expanded internationally; there is now an Open Government Partnership among a community of nations (Open Government Partnership, 2012).

Expanding Our Models of Justice in Dispute Resolution: A Field Test of the Contribution of Interactional Justice

Historically, researchers in conflict management have used theories of distributive and procedural justice to explain participant satisfaction with dispute resolution processes. Using a large national sample of exit surveys collected from participants in the United States Postal Service (USPS) REDRESS(R) program, the authors show that the procedural justice model better fits the data from this employment mediation program than the distributive justice model. However, the procedural justice model, as traditionally framed, includes no component for measuring changes in the relationship between the disputants. The authors suggest that an interactional model of justice, which includes measures of empowerment and recognition in a transformative index, in addition to measures of process and resolution, can better explain participant satisfaction with this program. The results of a multiple regression analysis support this hypothesis.

Organizational Justice and Dispute Resolution: A Six-Factor Model for Workplace Mediation

This study examines the relationship between organizational justice and workplace mediation. Despite the value of using organizational justice to assess the perceived fairness of workplace mediation, there may be some problems with the wholesale application of the traditional four-factor model of organizational justice to such processes. The most obvious problem is the application of a model designed to assess justice perception in a two-way supervisor-subordinate relationship (as is the case in most organizational justice research) to a mediation process where there are multiple and divergent directions of interaction and reduced power imbalances. This study proposes and tests a six-factor model of organizational justice for application to workplace mediation. It finds that a six-factor model provides a significantly better fit for workplace mediation than the traditional four-factor model. This result has implications for both the theory and practice behind workplace mediation.

The evolution of social norms in conflict resolution

In her classic essay ‘Collective Action and the Evolution of Social Norms’, Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom (2000) made a major contribution to our understanding of human institutions. She developed the ‘Indiana School’s’ Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) Framework at Indiana University’s Workshop on Political Theory and Policy Analysis. Her work has broad application to law and conflict resolution. We are currently undergoing a wave of privatization of justice in the United States. Companies are imposing mandatory or adhesive arbitration clauses on employees (Baker, 2004) and consumers (Demaine & Hensler, 2004) that preclude them from joining class actions or resorting to the public justice system to enforce laws on discrimination or consumer protection (Bingham, 2004; Sternlight, 2005). The result is undermining the enforcement of public law. This essay endeavors a brief application of Ostrom’s work to these private justice systems. It examines collective action and social norms in formal legal institutions and informal ones for managing conflict that have evolved outside the justice system. It introduces dispute system design (DSD) in the context of IAD. It applies IAD to examples of these systems. It concludes with issues, collective action and the development of social norms, for managing conflict in dispute resolution systems that have emerged in certain industries. Ostrom’s work can help us address collective action problems in these private justice systems.

Accountability Forums and Dispute System Design

ABSTRACT The accountability literature refers to forums of accountability, including judicial and quasi-judicial forums. Administrative agencies enforce law and manage conflict, in part, through quasi-judicial processes, such as adjudication and dispute resolution. This is an arena of public management largely missing in the accountability literature. How is accountability defined, designed, and assessed for the quasi-judicial systems that manage conflicts or resolve disputes in public agencies? This article applies theories of accountability and justice to understand accountability as a mechanism and a virtue in quasi-judicial agency settings. Drawing from the Dispute System Design literature to introduce design principles that enhance accountability to these forums, it provides a framework to assess the accountability promise of justice in these forums and suggests a program for further research on accountability using theories of justice.

Evaluating Transformative Mediation in Practice: The Premises, Principles, and Behaviors of USPS Mediators

This study explores the tactics and strategies of transformative mediators in practice. Specifically, the study examines the premises, principles, and behaviors of mediators in REDRESS, the United States Postal Service (USPS) employment mediation program. The study is also a process evaluation used to determine whether the REDRESS program is being implemented by mediators as designed by the USPS. Survey results indicate that REDRESS mediators understand and correctly use the transformative model. Moreover, triangulation of the results with other studies suggests that the REDRESS program has been implemented as it was designed.