D. Lipsky

Followers

Following

Co-authors

Public Views

I retired in January 2019 after spending 50 years on the Cornell faculty. For the past 12 years I was the Anne Evans Estabrook Professor of Dispute Resolution. From 1988 to 1997 I served as the dean of the ILR School at Cornell. In 1996 I was the co-founder of the Scheinman Institute on Conflict Resolution at Cornell and served as its director for 20 years. I have published 18 books and over 90 articles and chapters in books.

less

Fernando Zamith

Universidade do Porto

Armando Marques-Guedes

UNL - New University of Lisbon

Francisco Paulo Jamil Marques

The University of Iowa

Carey Doberstein

University of British Columbia

Viacheslav Kuleshov

Stockholm University

Pedro Rueda Ramírez

University of Barcelona

Alberto Petrucciani

Università degli Studi "La Sapienza" di Roma

Maurizio Vivarelli

Università degli Studi di Torino

Enrico Pio Ardolino

Università degli Studi "La Sapienza" di Roma

Kanchan Kamila

The University of Burdwan

Interests

Uploads

Papers by D. Lipsky

Collective Bargaining in American Industry: A Synthesis

by D. Lipsky and Clifford Donn

Lipsky, DB; Donn, CB (Hg.): Collective Bargaining in …, 1987

Whose Job Is It Anyway? Preparing Arbitrators for Consumer Dispute Resolution Programs

[Excerpt] In many respects, we have entered into a golden era in the evolution and study of confl... more [Excerpt] In many respects, we have entered into a golden era in the evolution and study of conflict resolution. One of the most obvious examples of this new era is the significant growth of conflict resolution programs in institutions of higher education. The purpose of this article is to examine the current state of university and law school conflict resolution programs. We then offer some conclusions and recommendations for addressing what we believe to be the critically important role academia can and should play in training arbitrators. Our review of academic programs suggests that the array of offerings has grown substantially and includes credit courses, clinics, degree programs, and certificates in conflict resolution. At our own institution, Cornell University, the response by our student body to opportunities for studying conflict resolution has overwhelmed our current capacity to meet their needs and interests.

Download

The Long Haul Effects of Interest Arbitration: The Case of New York State's Taylor Law

ILR Review, 2010

The authors examine debates about the effects of mandatory interest arbitration on police and fir... more The authors examine debates about the effects of mandatory interest arbitration on police and firefighters in New York State under the Taylor Law from 1974 to 2007. Comparing experience with interest arbitration in the first three years after the law was adopted with experiences from 1995 to 2007, the authors find that no strikes occurred under arbitration and that rates of dependence on arbitration declined considerably. Moreover, the effectiveness of mediation prior to and during arbitration remained high, the tripartite arbitration structure continued to foster discussion of options for resolution among arbitration panel members, and wage increases awarded under arbitration matched those negotiated voluntarily by the parties. Econometric estimates of the effects of interest arbitration on wage changes in a national sample suggest wage increases differed little in states with arbitration from those without it. The authors therefore propose a role for interest arbitration in nation...

Download

Social Capital and the Labor Movement

New Directions in the Study of Work and Employment, 2008

[Excerpt] The causes and consequences of the decline of the American labor movement over recent d... more [Excerpt] The causes and consequences of the decline of the American labor movement over recent decades have been examined in countless books and articles. Scholars and commentators, however, have virtually ignored one critical dimension. In this chapter, we focus on the social capital implications of the relative decline of the labor movement. There are several definitions of the term social capital. For our purposes, a relevant definition has been provided by the World Bank: 'Social capital refers to the institutions, relationships, and norms that shape the quality and quantity of a society's social interactions... Social capital is not just the sum of the institutions which underpin a society-it is the glue that holds them together.' The concept of social capital can be traced to the early part of the twentieth century and was implicitly used by philosophers as early as the eighteenth century. But recent research on social capital has been triggered largely by the work of Robert Putnam, especially his seminal books,

Download

The Scathingly Brilliant Scholarship of Lisa Blomgren Amsler (Formerly Bingham)

Negotiation and Conflict Management Research

Organizational Conflict Resolution and Strategic Choice: Evidence from a Survey of Fortune 1000 Firms

ILR Review

This article examines the strategic underpinnings of firms’ use of alternative dispute resolution... more This article examines the strategic underpinnings of firms’ use of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) practices. The authors argue that a firm’s strategic orientation and commitment to ADR shape its adoption of dispute resolution techniques—such as mediation and arbitration. Firms vary in the benefits they seek to gain from adopting ADR practices, and firm-level use is affected by these anticipated benefits. The authors also propose a link between a firm’s commitment to the diffusion, access, and their use of ADR, on the one hand, and employee usage on the other. They test their theory using survey data from Fortune 1000 corporations and identify four distinct strategic orientations toward ADR, which in turn help to explain use of ADR within firms. Finally, they also find that a firm’s commitment to ADR is also shown to affect the firm’s use of mediation and arbitration.

The Future of Conflict Management Systems

Conflict Resolution Quarterly, 2015

This article acknowledges Chris Merchant's contribution to the development of the concept of a co... more This article acknowledges Chris Merchant's contribution to the development of the concept of a conflict management system (CMS). It discusses the relationship between a CMS and a closely related concept, an integrated conflict management system (ICMS), which is a more comprehensive or integrated approach to conflict management. The article reports on surveys of Fortune 1000 corporations that show that the implementation of a CMS in these corporations rose from 17 percent in 1997 to about 30 percent in 2011. Chris Merchant expressed optimism about the future of conflict management systems. Although her vision of the future of conflict management systems has not yet been fulfilled, one can hope that if these systems provide not only organizational efficiency but also workplace justice, her optimism will one day be justified.

Download

Joint Labor-Management Training Programs for Healthcare Worker Advancement and Retention

The Politics of the Education Reform Movement: Some Implications for the Future of Teacher Bargaining

How Union Leaders View Job Training Programs

Toward a strategic theory of workplace conflict management

3 1d. OHIO STATE JOURNAL ON DISPUTE RESOLUTION alternative methods of resolving employment disput... more 3 1d. OHIO STATE JOURNAL ON DISPUTE RESOLUTION alternative methods of resolving employment disputes that avoided entanglement in the courts. 4 This reasoning had the appeal of Occam's razor-it had the virtues of parsimony and simplicity. The theory that ADR could best be understood as a manifestation of the inefficiency of our legal system also appealed to all those inside and outside the legal profession who believed they had been victimized by a system that badly needed reform. We term the conventional explanation for the rise of ADR the legalistic theory of ADR. The emergence of conflict management systems in the 1990s prompted scholars to frame an explanation for this new organizational phenomenon. These scholars recognized that the legalistic theory could not fully explain the growing use of conflict management systems. Indeed, focusing only on factors external to the firm (i.e., exogenous factors) to explain the rise of systems ignored the critical role played by factors internal to the firm (i.e., endogenous factors). External factors such as litigation, the threat of unionization, and market competition were found to be a necessary but insufficient explanation for the use of systems in organizations. One needed to understand that a fuller explanation for emergence of systems had to take account of the interaction between the internal dynamics of the organization and the external environment in which the organization existed. Some of the internal factors that mattered included management and leadership, political forces within the organization, human resource policies, and the nature and roots of conflict in the organization's employment relations. 5 We propose using the term "systems theory" for those explanations that examine the growing use of systems as a function of the interaction of external threats (such as litigation) and internal needs and pressures. The ultimate purpose of both theories is to explain how organizations resolve workplace disputes. There are two questions that previous theories of conflict resolution have sought to address: What factors explain how an organization handles workplace conflicts? How effective is the organization's handling of workplace conflicts in settling or resolving them? 4 Id.

Download

Introduction to The ILR School at Fifty: Voices of the Faculty, Alumni, and Friends

Conceptual Foundations: Walton and McKersie's Subprocesses of Negotiations

Collective Bargaining and the Quality of Work: The Views of Local Union Activists

Patterns of ADR Use in Corporate Disputes

Download

George Brooks: A Personal Reminiscence

Conflict Resolution and the Transformation of the Social Contract

... I have had the good fortune of being able to collaborate with several first-rate co-authors, ... more

What Do Unions Do? Comment

Economic Impact of Impasse Procedures in Teacher Negotiations: The Experience Under New York's Taylor Law, 1968-72

Unions and the Labor Market for Managers

Iza Discussion Papers, Nov 5, 2000

Unions and the Labor Market for Managers * * * * We examine the relationship between the employme... more Unions and the Labor Market for Managers * * * * We examine the relationship between the employment and compensation of managers and CEOs and the presence of a unionized workforce. We develop a simple efficiency wage model, with a tradeoff between higher wages for workers and more monitoring, which requires more managers. The model also assumes rent sharing between workers, managers and the owners of the firm. Unions, by redistributing rents towards the workers, lead to lower employment and lower pay for managers. Using a variety of data sets, we examine the implications of the model for the relationship between the employment and wages of managers and unionization. We find several results generally consistent with our model. (1) Both a higher fraction of unionization in an industry and region and a higher union wage differential are associated with fewer managers. (2) Managers wages are about 5 to 7 percent lower in unionized firms. (3) For CEOs the effects are larger: a 10 percent increase in unionization reduces the pay of CEOs by 2.5 percent or more.

Download

Collective Bargaining in American Industry: A Synthesis

by D. Lipsky and Clifford Donn

Lipsky, DB; Donn, CB (Hg.): Collective Bargaining in …, 1987

Whose Job Is It Anyway? Preparing Arbitrators for Consumer Dispute Resolution Programs

Download

The Long Haul Effects of Interest Arbitration: The Case of New York State's Taylor Law

ILR Review, 2010

Download

Social Capital and the Labor Movement

New Directions in the Study of Work and Employment, 2008

Download