The strategic style in mediation.

This article describes the strategic style approach to the mediation role. The hallmark of the approach is the mediator's attempt to address the underlying dysfunction that is fueling the conflict. Versions of the strategic style are illustrated in divorce mediation in a family court, the mediation of conflict among scientists at the National Institutes of Health, and the mediation of health care conflicts in a university teaching hospital. Despite this evidence, the strategic style is infrequently discussed in the practitioner literature and largely undocumented by researchers. Possible reasons for the low visibility of the strategic style are discussed, including the dominance of the alternative dispute resolution field by disciplines lacking developed notions of latent causes of conflict, the strong normative pressures on mediators to espouse the role of nondirective neutrals, the tendency of experts to lose conscious awareness of their schemas of practice, and the close ties between the strategic style and local conditions that may not be widely distributed in the universe of mediation practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]