In recent years many employers in the U.S., Great Britain, Ireland, and elsewhere, often in partnership with their unions, have turned to new approaches to managing and resolving workplace disputes. In the U.S. this movement is often called "alternative dispute resolution" (ADR), an approach that involves the use of mediation, arbitration, and other third-party dispute resolution techniques, rather than litigation, to resolve workplace disputes. Some employers have established so-called "conflict management systems," a pro-active, strategic approach to handling workplace conflict. This volume contains chapters by some of the world's leading scholars of workplace dispute resolution and conflict management as well as chapters by emerging younger scholars in these fields. The chapters present original research that combines cutting-edge thinking about the theoretical dimensions of ADR and conflict management along with rigorous empirical analyses of real-life data.

Writing in the New York Times, dateline Cambridge, Mass., March 23, 1977, A.H. Raskin reported as follows: "Never had so many secretaries of labor, Democratic and Republican, been gathered under one roof. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology had invited all the holders of that office since the Kennedy administration to come in celebration of the 40th anniversary of the institute's Industrial Relations Section and the 25th anniversary of its Alfred P. Sloan School of Management. The secretaries' specific assignment was to outline their 'unfinished agenda' for American industrial relations. To keep the appraisal from getting too ingrown, the cabinet-level perspective was balanced by an independent assessment of the state of collective bargaining, labor law, and the economy as seen by a panel of high-ranking corporate and union officials." Unfinished Business records the proceedings of this celebration.

Major changes within and between organizations are now generally negotiated by the parties that have a stake in the consequences of the changes. This was not always so. In 1965, with A Behavioral Theory of Labor Negotiations, Richard Walton and Robert McKersie laid the analytical foundation for much of the innovation in the practice of negotiation that has occurred over the last thirty-nine years. Since that time, however, the field has undergone significant changes, and Walton and McKersie's ideas have been applied to a wide variety of situations beyond labor negotiations.Negotiations and Change represents the next generation of thinking. Experts on negotiations, management, and organizational behavior take stock of what has been learned since 1965. They extend and apply the concepts of Walton and McKersie and of other leaders in the study of negotiations to a broad range of business, professional, and personal concerns: workplace teams, conflict management systems, corporate governance, and environmental disputes. While building on those foundations, the essays demonstrate the continued robustness and relevance of Walton and McKersie's behavioral theory by suggesting ways it could be used to improve the management of change. Returning to its roots, the volume concludes with a retrospective by Richard Walton and Robert McKersie.