{"id":14,"date":"2007-06-14T12:49:32","date_gmt":"2007-06-14T19:49:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/dilemma\/2007\/06\/14\/dilemma-2-saticifing-parties\/"},"modified":"2007-06-14T12:50:50","modified_gmt":"2007-06-14T19:50:50","slug":"dilemma-2-saticifing-parties","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dilemma\/2007\/06\/14\/dilemma-2-saticifing-parties\/","title":{"rendered":"Dilemma #2 : Satisficing Parties"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Mediation is often a way of enlarging the &#8220;pie&#8221;&#8230;but what happens when you know as a mediator that the pie is significantly larger than the parties have recognized int heir agreement?<\/p>\n<p>One school of thought says &#8220;leave them alone, it&#8217;s their deal!&#8221; This is fine and dandy,&#8211;except when you know that something outside of the deal is highly likely to break the deal.<br \/>\nAnother school says, &#8220;Well, then ask them lots and lots of questions and try to see whether the issue in your head is relevant to them!&#8221; Well, that&#8217;s also fine and dandy, particularly if both parties are represented by counsel.<\/p>\n<p>But, what happens when the parites are simply willing to do anything due to fatigue? What if it is clear that the reason they are <em>satisficing<\/em> is because of something you and\/or your co-mediator have done or not done? How do you fix it?<\/p>\n<p>I found the term and a readable explanation on the <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.interaction-design.org\/encyclopedia\/satisficing.html\">Interaction-Design website<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8221;<\/p>\n<h1>Satisficing<\/h1>\n<p>by Mads Soegaard<\/p>\n<p><!-- begin content zone  -->Satisficing describes the situation where people settle with a solution to a problem that is &#8220;good enough&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>According to Herbert Simon, people do not seek the best possible solutions to problems, but operate within what he has called <em>bounded rationality<\/em>. Herbert Simon, whose primary object of research was problem solving, coined the term &#8216;to satisfice&#8217;, which denotes the situation where people seek solutions or accept choices or judgments that are &#8216;good enough&#8217; for their purposes, but could be optimised (Simon 1957 as cited in Kunda 1999). In the tradition of rationalistic decision-making, it was conventionally assumed that individuals seek the optimal result. Instead, as Simon argues, it is often <em>rational<\/em> to seek to satisfice in that the process of looking for better solutions\/results expends resources. A better solution would thus have to justify the extra costs carried in finding it.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So, let&#8217;s open it up to a general case: what do <u>you<\/u> do when the parties &#8220;satifice&#8221;?<\/p>\n<p>Do you have a definition of this concept that would work better in the mediation context?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mediation is often a way of enlarging the &#8220;pie&#8221;&#8230;but what happens when you know as a mediator that the pie is significantly larger than the parties have recognized int heir agreement? One school of thought says &#8220;leave them alone, it&#8217;s their deal!&#8221; This is fine and dandy,&#8211;except when you know that something outside of the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1201,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1616],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dilemma"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dilemma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dilemma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dilemma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dilemma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1201"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dilemma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dilemma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dilemma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dilemma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dilemma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}