Neighbor on neighbor disputes are all too common, and to those outsiders who don't have to live with the neighbor, the issues can seem insignificant. But to those who have to live next to each other, the issues can be huge and seem insurmountable.
Recently, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that condominium homeowner associations can enforce their rules as long as the rules are not unreasonable or oppressive. The co-directors of the Center for Negotiation and Conflict Resolution at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers examined this ruling and then asked, how do you ensure peace and harmony between neighbors.
The condominium association at issue in the New Jersey Supreme Court case has 10,000 residents (that's right--10,000 is not a typo). To even the untrained observer, one can guess that disputes will arise when that many people are involved.
The authors suggest--and rightly so--that the process for resolving disputes is important. People need to have their interests heard, there needs to be a way to achieve resolution to conflicting issues, and the participants must want to abide by the agreement they make.
Mediation achieves those goals. Instead of having a heavy-handed authority make a decision (that perhaps no one agrees with), mediation allows the participants to have a stake in the ultimate outcome and an incentive to abide by the decision. Mediation can strengthen the bonds between neighbors, by allowing them to air their grievances in a safe, controlled atmosphere, with a neutral, with everyone there knowing that the goal is to resolve the dispute. I've seen this myself, in negotiations and settlement discussions where the parties--with very raw emotions--at the end of the day hugged each other and invited each other to dinner.
Recently, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that condominium homeowner associations can enforce their rules as long as the rules are not unreasonable or oppressive. The co-directors of the Center for Negotiation and Conflict Resolution at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers examined this ruling and then asked, how do you ensure peace and harmony between neighbors.
The condominium association at issue in the New Jersey Supreme Court case has 10,000 residents (that's right--10,000 is not a typo). To even the untrained observer, one can guess that disputes will arise when that many people are involved.
The authors suggest--and rightly so--that the process for resolving disputes is important. People need to have their interests heard, there needs to be a way to achieve resolution to conflicting issues, and the participants must want to abide by the agreement they make.
Mediation achieves those goals. Instead of having a heavy-handed authority make a decision (that perhaps no one agrees with), mediation allows the participants to have a stake in the ultimate outcome and an incentive to abide by the decision. Mediation can strengthen the bonds between neighbors, by allowing them to air their grievances in a safe, controlled atmosphere, with a neutral, with everyone there knowing that the goal is to resolve the dispute. I've seen this myself, in negotiations and settlement discussions where the parties--with very raw emotions--at the end of the day hugged each other and invited each other to dinner.
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