Article: Failed case, mission accomplished? Mediation in organisations and diversity

in: Where mediation lives. Yearbook Mediation 2019/2020

Dr Sascha Weigel

Extract from the text:

„…Two points in the process architecture were important in the further development process. On the one hand, it was important to ensure that the counselling system reflected the complexity of the client system: As a white, male, external mediator in a German corporate unit that consisted of over 70% women but had no 10% female staff on the management floors, mediation was unlikely to be successful in this constellation. In this respect, co-mediation was the obvious choice - female and, if possible, black.

On the other hand, it was important how mediation was given its organisational character in the specific case, i.e. how it could be carried out in an organisation-related manner. This made it necessary for the organisation with its interests and concerns to always be "in the room". In this way, the conflict could be utilised so that the organisation could learn from and as a result of the conflict escalation and initiate sustainable changes. This necessity fits in with the topic of discrimination in organisations. There is a regular risk here that the blind spot of the organisation in mediation leads to the context-based conflict drivers being ignored and the individuals involved being isolated: Those who are structurally discriminated against are discriminated against precisely once again by the mediation that makes them alone. Mediation itself becomes a stabiliser of the organisational structure. Consequently, the mediator would also be part of this single-minded context that does not enable equalisation…“