How Parties Experience Mediation

This book presents an unprecedented qualitative research study on relational changes in mediation with a truly interdisciplinary outset, drawing on the literature on psychology, alternative dispute resolution and business. Mediation's potential to induce changes in parties' relationships as an advantage of the process is commonly mentioned in the literature. However, despite its being a key to reconciliation, relational changes in mediation has not yet been a topic of foundational and fine-grained qualitative enquiry. As the first study in the literature, this research uses in-depth interviews with mediation parties and the qualitative methodology of interpretative phenomenological analysis in order to explore participants' lived experiences. The phenomenological stance ensures a particularly rich data set and a nuanced interpretative analysis. This pioneering piece of research seeks to enter mediation parties' true experiences as closely as possible, moving beyond pre-existing theoretical, quantitative and large-scale qualitative explorations. The themes are discussed in the context of theory, research and practice. Therefore, this book advances knowledge about mediation both in theoretical and practical terms. Innovative conclusions and recommendations are provided for developing mediation practice, mediation training programmes, and further research.