glossary_for_dispute

01/21/2026:

A New Glossary for Dispute Resolution

Introduction: Why Language Fails People in Real Disputes

Dispute resolution language is often presented as neutral, orderly, and reassuring. It describes processes, roles, and outcomes as though disagreement occurs in a stable environment—one defined by choice, fairness, and mutual participation. In practice, most disputes unfold under far less accommodating conditions. They occur within hierarchies, under time pressure, and against the backdrop of real consequences for saying the wrong thing, asking the wrong question, or acting too soon.

Often, individuals are triggered into action by their own emotional responses, interpreting events through the lens of fear, prior experience, and untested assumptions rather than verified information.

When the language used to describe dispute resolution assumes safety and parity, it quietly misleads the very people it is meant to help. Terms such as engagement, dialogue, or resolution imply freedom of action that many individuals do not have. Silence is labeled avoidance rather than judgment. Delay is framed as indecision rather than restraint. Agreement is treated as success, even when the cost of reaching it is personal credibility, professional standing, or future leverage.

Language does more than describe conflict—it shapes how people interpret risk and legitimacy. It influences which actions feel reasonable, which feel reckless, and which feel off-limits altogether. When that language fails to reflect constraint, power imbalance, and consequences, individuals are left navigating high-stakes disputes with a vocabulary designed for far safer terrain.

Methodology Description and Results

This inquiry began with a practical question rather than a theoretical one: Does the language commonly used to describe dispute resolution equip individuals to make sound judgments under constraint? To examine that question, existing dispute-resolution glossaries were reviewed across legal, academic, regulatory, and commercial domains. Inclusion was limited to sources that presented themselves as formal glossaries or definitional references focused on dispute or conflict resolution, rather than incidental mentions or informal usage.

Terms were collected through manual review and consolidated into a single working list. Duplicates and close synonyms were normalized, and definitions were compared for scope, implied assumptions, and decision relevance. That consolidated vocabulary was then compared against the glossary developed during the creation of the Resolving Disputes with Your Boss training manual—a glossary refined through applied use, scenario testing, and iterative revision.

The review identified ten distinct websites that publish formal dispute-resolution glossaries. These sources fell into four broad categories: judicial and governmental institutions; regulatory and industry bodies; academic and research-oriented organizations; and commercial and technology platforms. Across these sources, more than 200 distinct words and phrases were collected once duplicates and near-synonyms were consolidated. While the volume of terms suggested breadth, much of the apparent diversity reflected relabeling rather than conceptual expansion.

The most substantial overlap occurred around process-based vocabulary. By contrast, there was little shared language for hierarchy, retaliation risk, time pressure, or outcome evaluation beyond case closure.

What Dispute Resolution Should Be

Dispute resolution should be understood not merely as the selection of a process, but as the exercise of judgment under constraint. In real disputes, individuals rarely choose freely among options. They assess risk, timing, authority, and consequence before deciding whether to engage, defer, reframe, or disengage. A meaningful conception of dispute resolution must account for that reality.

At its core, dispute resolution is the disciplined management of disagreement in environments shaped by unequal power, limited information, and real exposure to loss. Its purpose is not simply to reach agreement, but to preserve legitimacy, credibility, and future options while navigating conflict responsibly. In some circumstances, resolution may mean clarification rather than closure, containment rather than settlement, or delay rather than immediate engagement.

Processes such as mediation, negotiation, or arbitration are tools—not outcomes in themselves. Their value depends on context, timing, and the individual’s capacity to participate without undue risk. A dispute may be “resolved” procedurally and still be strategically damaging.

How Dispute Resolution Is Currently Treated

In most academic and institutional settings, dispute resolution is presented as a structured alternative to adjudication. The emphasis is placed on process typologies—mediation, arbitration, negotiation, and related hybrids—and on the roles and norms associated with each. These frameworks are valuable, but they are typically built on assumptions of voluntary participation, procedural fairness, and the availability of neutral facilitators. Power imbalance, personal risk, and constrained choice are often treated as contextual complications rather than central design conditions.

Commercial and popular treatments take a different approach. Dispute resolution language is frequently simplified and standardized for accessibility, discoverability, or compliance training. Terms are flattened into interchangeable labels, and definitions prioritize clarity over situational nuance. In doing so, the language becomes the tail that wags the dog. It is easier to talk about, but much less helpful for judging real disputes in terms of real causality and real behavior.

Across both domains, dispute resolution is primarily framed as something that happens after conflict has escalated, rather than as a set of judgments made under pressure and uncertainty.

Vocabulary Comparison: Overlap, Gaps, and Misalignment

Comparison between the comprehensive dispute-resolution glossaries reviewed and the glossary developed for the training manual reveals three distinct patterns: areas of clear overlap, nominal overlap, and meaningful absence.

Direct overlap is strongest around core process vocabulary such as mediation, arbitration, negotiation, settlement, neutral, escalation, and legitimacy. Nominal overlap occurs when words like engagement or resolution exist but carry assumptions of safety and voluntariness.

The most consequential gap appears in the absence of strategic and conditional language. Concepts such as hierarchy, retaliation risk, constrained choice, time pressure, successful settlement, strategic restraint, tolerance for inquiry, and near-parity are either missing or only implied.

The gap is not procedural—it is strategic.

A Way Forward

A more useful dispute-resolution vocabulary must move beyond naming processes and begin naming conditions, risks, and judgments. It should help individuals assess when engagement is prudent, when restraint is protective, and how outcomes should be evaluated under real constraints.

Language should distinguish participation from choice, agreement from success, and silence from avoidance. The goal is not to standardize speech, but to improve discernment.

Conclusion and Resource Link

Dispute resolution does not fail because processes are ineffective. It fails when the language used to describe conflict does not reflect the true conditions under which real disputes are navigated.

MCL & Associates, Inc. has published its New Glossary for Dispute Resolution, containing more than 200 unique and copyrighted definitions developed as part of MCL’s Business Dispute Readiness (BDR)™ training program. The glossary is offered as a public service, at no charge, for educational, professional, and non-commercial reference use. Its purpose is to promote shared understanding, reduce misinterpretation, and support the consistent, defensible application of dispute-resolution strategies.

Grounded in MCL’s strategic approach to conflict resolution, the glossary emphasizes practical workplace meaning rather than academic abstraction. It is designed to assist everyday employees and workers in navigating the often unpredictable dilemmas that arise in real organizational environments.

Permission is granted to quote, reference, or cite individual terms or definitions, in part or in whole, provided clear and direct attribution is given to one of the following:

MCL & Associates, Inc., Business Dispute Readiness (BDR)™ Glossary, or
Mark Lefcowitz, Resolving Disputes with Your Boss, Business Dispute Readiness (BDR)™ Program

Where concepts are adapted from external sources (for example, Bryant Wedge), such attribution is explicitly noted within the glossary. More general psychological, organizational, negotiation, and conflict-resolution concepts are included for purposes of educational integration and contextual understanding and remain the intellectual property of their respective authors.

For your free PDF copy, go to:

https://www.mcl-associates.com/business_dispute_readiness_training.html

While listening to an audiobook on the Medici by Paul Strathern, I was presented with a historical citation that I knew to be incredibly inaccurate. In a chapter entitled, "Godfathers of the Scientific Renaissance". discussing the apocryphal tale of Galileo's experiment conducted from the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the author cites Neil Armstrong in the Apollo 11 flight to the Moon with its memorable modern recreation, using a hammer and a feather.

Attributing this famous experiment to Armstrong on Apollo 11 is incorrect. It occurred on August 2, 1971, at the end of the last EVA of Apollo 15, presented by Astronaut Dave Scott. To press the point further, Scott used a feather from a very specific species: a falcon's feather. This small piece of trivia is memorable since Scott accompanied by crew member Al Worden arrived on the Lunar surface using the Lunar Module christened, "Falcon".

In an instant, the author's faux pas – for me -- undercut the book's entire validity. In an instant, it soured my listening enjoyment.

Mr. Strathern is approximately a decade my senior. As a well-published writer and historian, it is presumed that he subscribes to the professional standards of careful research and accuracy. Given this well-documented piece of historical modern trivia, I cannot fathom how he got it so wrong. Moreover, I cannot figure out how such an egregious error managed to go unscathed through what I assumed was a standard professional proofreading and editing process.

If the author and the publisher’s many editorial staff had got this single incontrovertible event from recent history wrong, what other counterfactual information did the book contain?

What is interesting to me, is my own reaction or -- judging from this narrative – some might say, my over-reaction to a fairly common occurrence. Why was I so angry? Why could I not just shake it off with a philosophical, ironic shake of the head?

And that is the point: accidental misinformation, spin and out-and-out propaganda -- and the never-ending stream of lies, damned lies, and unconfirmed statistics whose actual methodology is either shrouded or not even attempted -- are our daily fare. At some point, it is just too much to suffer in silence.

I have had enough of it.

God knows I do not claim to be a paragon of virtue. I told lies as a child, to gloss over personal embarrassments, though I quickly learned that I am not particularly good at deception. I do not like it when others try to deceive me. I take personal and professional pride in being honest about myself and my actions.

Do I make mistakes and misjudgments personally and professionally? Of course, I do. We all do. Have I done things for which I am ashamed? Absolutely. Where I have made missteps in my life, I have taken responsibility for my actions, and have apologized for my actions, or tried to explain them if I have the opportunity to do so.

For all of these thoughtless self-centered acts, I can only move forward. There is nothing I can do about now except to try to do grow and be a better human being in all aspects of my life. That's all any of us can do. I try to treat others as I wish to be treated: with honesty and openness about my personal and private needs, and when I am able to accommodate the wants and needs of those who have entered the orbit of my life.

We all have a point of view. Given the realities of human psychology and peer pressures to conform, it is not surprising that I or anyone else would surrender something heartfelt without some sort of struggle. However, we have a responsibility to others -- and to ourselves -- to not fabricate a narrative designed to misinform, or manipulate others.

Lying is a crime of greed, only occasionally punished when uncovered in a court of law
I am sick to death with liars, “alternative facts” in all their varied plumages and their all too convenient camouflage of excuses and rationales. While I am nowhere close to removing this class of humans from impacting my life, I think it is well past the time to start speaking out loud about our out-of-control culture of pathological untruthfulness openly.

Lying about things that matter -- in all its many forms, both overt and covert -- is unacceptable. When does lying matter? When you are choosing to put your self-interest above someone else’s through deceit.

Some might call me a "sucker" or "hopelessly naive". I believe that I am neither. Our species - as with all living things -- is caught in a cycle of both competition and cooperation
We both compete and cooperate to survive.

There is a sardonic observation, “It’s all about mind over matter. If I no longer mind, it no longer matters”. This precisely captures the issue that we all must face: the people who disdainfully lie to us – and there are many – no longer mind. We – the collective society of humanity no longer matter, if for them we ever did.

We are long past the time when we all must demand a new birth of social norms. We all have the responsibility to maintain them and enforce them in our own day-to-day lives. Without maintaining the basic social norms of honesty and treating others as you wish to be treated in return, how can any form of human trust take place?