In this interview with prominent representatives of the British Acas and the Belgian Social Mediators Service important developments in the ADR labour practice are discussed. In particular, the impact of the financial crisis and the ever advancing globalization process on the labour negotiating climate is the centre of attention.

Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) and Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) are on the rise in Europe and different Member States. In May 2013, the European Parliament and Council adopted an ADR Directive (n 2013/11) and ODR Regulation (n 524/2013) that will bring major changes in the European and national ADR landscapes. Both instruments are analyzed in this article. On the other hand, attention is also paid to the Belgian ODR-platform Belmed, that was created in 2011 and facilitates Belgian consumers to make an online ADR application. Finally, a plea is made for the exchange of data between ODR-platforms and national regulators, as a means to detect mass cases.

Employee resistance to change is a key factor to turnaround failure. Interim managers who support companies in financial distress, mediate between employees, management, shareholders, bank, and other stakeholders in order to solve organisational conflicts. This article explores the internal social dynamic aspects of a turnaround. It develops a theoretical framework on the role of trust, emotion and communication, and its affect on reducing internal resistance, and describes the outcomes of an exploratory research study. Findings confirm that employee motivation to make a reorganisation a success significantly impacts upon turnaround success. Resistance can be reduced by an open communication climate, offering a new perspective, attention to emotions, managing by walking around, and ‘practicing what you preach’. More research is necessary to generalize the findings and to better understand success and failure factors.

Providing access to justice is a major challenge for any judicial system. Canada has gone to great lengths to meet this challenge over the past thirty years, in part by developing alternative dispute resolution methods. Unfortunately, results have been mixed. Canadian society is currently preparing to renew its vision of access to justice and the contribution of dispute resolution methods in meeting that challenge. What lessons can we learn from Canada’s experience? What are the new directions and initiatives for access to justice? Our paper suggests that the Canadian experience can make two contributions to the access to justice debate. First, we suggest that the notion is evolving in the legal community from an institutional perspective to a contextual vision of access to justice. Second, we point out an evolution of alternative or appropriate dispute resolution methods toward a participatory justice movement. Our paper proposes a new Canadian perspective on access to justice and dispute resolution methods.

On 1 January 2013 the new Mediation Rules of CEPANI (the Belgian Center for Arbitration and Mediation) entered into force. The 2013 CEPANI Mediation Rules replace the 2005 version of the CEPANI Mediation Rules and also the 2010 version of the CEPANI ICT (Information and Communication Technology) Mediation Rules. The 2013 Rules contain provisions on the introduction of the mediation, the appointment of the mediator, the mediation protocol to be established at the beginning of the mediation process, the conduct of the mediation, the confidentiality, the end of the mediation and its costs. The authors comment on these various provisions of the CEPANI Mediation Rules and explain thereby also the relevant provisions of the Belgian Mediation Law contained in Chapter VII of the Belgian Judicial Code.