ABSTRACT
The growing literature on negotiation and mediation in business settings reminds corporate managers and their attorneys that negotiation is a way of life that need not be limited to settling disputes with other businesses. Some businesses also have decided that developing innovative ways of handling complaints by consumers or employees can improve their public image, their sales, and their relations with their workers. Only a very few dissatisfied consumers use any third-party complaint mechanism, whether through the courts, private associations, government consumer offices, or media action lines. In complaints involving flagrant practices by businesses that bilk consumers, critics have pointed out that informal settlement efforts, unlike courts, cannot contribute to broad solutions. Businesses have crucial ongoing relationships not only with their suppliers and customers but with their own employees. At Rockwell International, for example, high-level current employees are required to sign agreements to arbitrate any future employment disputes as a condition of receiving their annual stock options.
