The Culture of Peace, Dispute Resolution Strengthens the Economy

If you already know what you have to do and you don’t do it, then you are worse off than before.

Confucius

Conflicts can be hidden, ignored, tried to control or confronted, but not disappear, since conflict is an inherent part of the life of every person and organization. They reduce the productivity of any business organization to the detriment of the community that integrates it and the development of the country by losing or stopping the generation of employment and reducing the economic benefit. Therefore, it is necessary that these conflicts or controversies be addressed for their resolution and thus contribute to the constant or growing generation of wealth.

The management or prevention of conflicts that arise in companies, in the case of legal conflicts, may correspond to civil mediation, commercial mediation and even the criminal field, or to a combination of these areas. They can also be social.

Mexico is the fifth country with the most family businesses in the world, they are the most numerous type of business units in our country, they include the 250 largest companies and they represent 90% of the companies. For this reason, it is important to bear in mind that the conflicts that arise, in addition to the areas mentioned in the previous paragraph, may also correspond to family mediation.

It is mainly about small and medium-sized companies, hence the importance that they manage to transcend in time and to the following generations.

Merchants, industrialists and bankers —and entrepreneurs in general— are not only concerned with profits and prosperity in their businesses. They are also people who have achieved a certain position and prestige among their peers, their clients, their employees, the authorities and the consumers of their products or services; this is an asset that they care about maintaining and, therefore, caring for.

Acting in the world of commerce, industry, banking and business in general involves exogenous risks that may be beyond the control of economic agents. Many businesses can fail or many obligations not be met without bad faith, fraudulent practices or negligence.

A judicial decision, regardless of whether it legally resolves a conflict, can cause those who carry out acts of commerce, damage that is difficult to repair, since it can destroy reputations and business relationships that have been cultivated for decades.

Commercial mediation offers those who are involved in business a space of trust in which they can air all the aspects that are in a conflict or controversy, from emotional factors to those related to amounts of money, without the market necessarily takes note of the dispute.

Commercial mediation contributes to the streamlining of economic relations since it promotes legal certainty and eliminates or at least reduces unnecessary transaction costs, in addition to the time savings it entails. It also promotes fair and satisfactory solutions and encourages competitiveness and productivity. Those solutions, if applicable, set forth in the mediation agreement, will have the force of res judicata, in such a way that there will be no doubt that the agreement is incontrovertible.

Mediation in commercial matters is an excellent way to settle differences in the business world, since these procedures are confidential and solutions are proposed by the parties involved, not by a third party unrelated to the dispute.

The best performing small, medium and large companies in the United States favor mediation, over arbitration and litigation, to resolve their legal disputes. They have verified that higher levels of satisfaction are obtained with commercial mediation than with arbitration, precisely because the parties —and not the arbitrator— are the ones who reach, by mutual agreement, the solution of their problems.

In this way, companies maintain stronger relationships with their customers, suppliers, employees and partners; they value and appreciate the fairness and speed of alternative justice processes in the resolution of disputes with customers and suppliers, separating themselves more and more from the vision of litigation as the only option.

Another source of conflicts or controversies are those that arise in daily coexistence in the workplace and consumption of goods and services, without this referring to the management or resolution of legal or labor conflicts or controversies. For the prevention, management and resolution of this type of conflict or dispute, organizational mediation has been developed as part of social mediation.

Many people spend a good part of their lives at their workplace. In general, these places are institutions, organizations or companies, public or private, such as shopping malls, restaurants, self-service and department stores, restaurants, cafeterias, banks and offices, to name a few examples. These organizations have become increasingly complex systems, in which controversies or conflicts inevitably arise between those who live there on a daily basis.

In this context, mediation is useful to improve or correct the organizational environment in favor of both those who live day to day in their workplaces, as well as their productivity, which also deteriorates due to the conflicts that arise.

Organizational mediation, which serves to improve the environment within an institution or organization, benefits collaborators or dependents and even the institution, organization or company itself, because controversies or conflicts between the organization or company can be detected in a timely manner. its collaborators and those who come frequently —whether they are employees, customers or suppliers—, so that disputes are managed and resolved promptly and satisfactorily with the intervention of a mediator formed from among the collaborators or dependents of the same institution, organization or company.

The government, for its part, is obliged to promote the best possible conditions so that productive activities are strengthened, wealth, jobs and taxes are generated, not to replace free enterprise. Historically, it has been shown that the government is a bad businessman that ends up transferring its losses to the treasury.

The intervention of the State in the economy is based on articles 25, which refers to the stewardship of the State; 26, related to democratic planning and that recognizes a co-responsibility of the public, social and private sectors in relation to the achievement of national economic development; the 27th, related to the original property and the direct domain of the main natural resources of the soil and subsoil, as well as the 28th, which refers to the control of the exclusive strategic activities of the State, the defense of the market economy in the rest of the economic activities not reserved to the State and the functions of the Bank of Mexico, mainly.

Currently we see that the president not only promotes productive activities in charge of the public sector, but preferably assigns them to the military, whose vocation is far from being business. These activities carried out by the armed forces, in addition to being carried out in a framework of opacity, are carried out by people who, unlike small, medium and large businessmen, do not put anything of their own at risk.

Combining bureaucracy and militarization is not a successful formula in business activities.

*The author is a lawyer and professional mediator.

phmergoldd@anmediacion.com.mx

Twitter: @Phmergoldd