Dispute systems design: A preventive approach to ethical conflict in organizations

Questions of ethical behavior have arisen in every culture throughout history. It is important for organizations to anticipate ethical dilemmas before they become crises or disasters. This paper considers an open systems approach to designing practical mechanisms for conflict resolution. It uses the BART whistle-blowing incident of 1972 as an example of how a dispute system design as developed by Ury, Brett, and Goldberg could have been applied to ethical conflicts and potentially could have resulted in a win-win resolution for both person and organization.