This is “Concluding Thoughts”, section 4.6 from the book Business and the Legal and Ethical Environment (v. 1.0). For details on it (including licensing), click here.

For more information on the source of this book, or why it is available for free, please see the project's home page. You can browse or download additional books there. To download a .zip file containing this book to use offline, simply click here.

Has this book helped you? Consider passing it on:
Help Creative Commons
Creative Commons supports free culture from music to education. Their licenses helped make this book available to you.
Help a Public School
DonorsChoose.org helps people like you help teachers fund their classroom projects, from art supplies to books to calculators.

4.6 Concluding Thoughts

Alternative dispute resolution (ADR) is a popular and common group of methods to resolve disputes in many different contexts. In business, ADR is commonly used in business to business (B2B), business to consumer (B2C), and business to employee (B2E) disputes. Several methods of ADR exist. The most commonly employed methods include negotiation, mediation, and arbitration. Under federal law, national policy favors arbitration. Sometimes ADR is perceived as unfair, because parties have unequal power relative to each other or because the subject matter of the dispute is not considered suitable for ADR. Like other areas of law and public policy, ADR is dynamic and subject to change, particularly when special interest groups coalesce successfully and create momentum for change within our legal system. Currently, there is a nascent movement to exclude certain types of disputes from ADR by amending the federal law that requires mandatory arbitration when parties have contractually consented to it.