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Noam Ebner their use to individual practitioners. This might be done by offering “rooms” to individual mediators on an ad hoc basis or ongoing basis, much in the way a face-to-face mediation center might rent out its meeting room to an individual practitioner (e.g., TheMediation- Room, Juripax). 18 Another model involves a more robust connection between the institutional service provider and individual practitioners, in which the former sets the latter up with a dedicated “space” on their platform, branded according to the practitioner’s preferences. There have also been instances of service providers selling country-specific or language-specific licenses or concessions, and other types of partnership. 3.2 Contexts of E-Mediation Application: Mediatability It is necessary to shed light on specific case elements which might make the online venue a particularly suitable arena for mediation. As for areas of particular activity, or dispute areas which seem particularly targeted by service providers, the most common seem to be complaint handling, e-commerce and low-value cases between geographically distant parties. The rationale for targeting these fields in particular would seem to be inherent in the way the promise of ODR was framed by its early propounders. However, these thrusts are not as predominant as they used to be, and perhaps with good reason, given the low level of longevity among early service providers, many of whom targeted these contexts. Reviewing the websites of practitioners and service providers, it is clear that a much wider and more general net is now being cast regarding dispute type and context. Some providers do not limit customers’ imaginations to any particular context at all, and others expand on the multiple contexts in which they intervene. Two things should be kept in mind while considering the spread of e-mediation – in the past, and in the future. The first is that the use of e-mediation process has not developed in line with people’s intuitive conceptions regarding types of disputes that can be mediated online. These limiting preconceptions were breached at a very early point in e-mediation’s history, as people became accustomed to taking more and more of their lives online. The second thing to keep in mind is that many e-mediation processes take place after disputes have already entered a settlement-through-ODR process. As ODR in general casts a very wide net, different types of cases find themselves funneled through to e-mediation even though these might not have reached e-mediation as a first choice. I will expand on these two points. 3.2.1 E-Mediation: Not What You Would Expect In a dynamic very reminiscent of the growth of mediation as an area of practice, it would now be difficult to isolate a dispute area in which e-mediation is not offered or would not 18 See also Rule (2002). 374
17 e-Mediation be considered suitable by a mediator. These include areas in which one might intuitively question the e-channel’s suitability. Furthermore, whereas original thinking on ODR envisioned it flourishing as a tool for resolving disputes-at-a-distance, settling online business and other transactional disputes, e-mediation has certainly jumped those conceptual fences and is being offered in other areas. ODR in general has long left behind the conception that it is only suitable for disputes originating in online activity. 19 In addition, it has been shown to be a powerful tool for resolving disputes where geography is not a factor limiting participants’ ability to convene face-to-face, and disputes in which emotional, relational and social issues are at least as important as transactional elements. Two areas demonstrating this last notion are online family mediation and workplace mediation. Somewhat counterintuitively, family mediation has always been an area of interest for e-mediation. 20 Two recent projects – one conducted by Juripax in 2008, and the other conducted by The British Columbia Mediator Roster Society between May 2009 and February 2010 – are both good indicators of the benefits of e-mediation for family cases. Both projects saw high settlement rates, which were complemented with high rates of party satisfaction and willingness to utilize online mediation in the future. 21 Similarly, workplace mediation, while long envisioned as suitable when involving organizations spread out across the globe, or between members of virtual teams working at a distance, 22 is receiving an increased amount of attention as a tool for settings involving close-quarters relationships. 23 A recent study conducted by Juripax has shown that adding an online element to workplace mediation processes contributes to their effectiveness by eliminating asymmetry in hierarchal workplace disputes (such as between subordinates and supervisors). 24 We note these two areas of practice as examples of cases which by nature deal with close-up, emotional and personal issues between parties who know each other well. While certainly not the cases for which ODR was originally envisioned, they (and other areas sharing similar characteristics, such as elder care mediation, health care mediation or others) might prove to be areas of significant growth for e-mediation practice. 19 See Conley Tyler & Bornstein (2006); Rule (2002). 20 See Granat (1996); Rule (2002). 21 K. Bollen & M.C. Euwema, Online Mediation in Divorce Cases, Catholic University of Leuven 2010; C. Getz, Evaluation of the Distance Mediation Project: Report on Phase II of the Technology-Assisted Family Mediation Project, Victoria, BC British Columbia Mediator Roster Society 2010. 22 See Rule (2002); N. Ebner, “Online Dispute Resolution: Applications for e-HRM”, in T. Torres-Coronas & M. Arias-Oliva (eds.), Encyclopedia of Human Resources Information Systems: Challenges in e-HRM, Hershey, PA, Idea Group Reference Publishing 2008. 23 The topic of organizational and workplace topic received an impressive amount of attention at Cyberweek 2010. See , last accessed 20 February 2011. 24 K. Bollen and M.C. Euwema, Angry at Your Boss or Fearing Your Employee? Negative Affect in Hierarchical Conflicts and the Moderating Role of E-Supported Mediation, Kyoto, IACM 2009. 375
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