Ombudsman as translator: A critical hermeneutic interpretation of alternative dispute resolution

This dissertation looks at Alternative Dispute Resolution through the insights of practicing ombudspersons, who are confidential, independent, informal, neutral, off-the-record resources, especially because they serve as a particular kind of translator in helping parties explain and understand job-related conflict so they might resolve issues in more fulfilling ways.; Organizations today are challenged to find suitable solutions to resolve job-related employee conflict, because conflicts waste resources and often require litigation. However, the majority of programs tend to take a methodological, or positivist, approach which tends to be punitive in nature. This can lead to employee dissatisfaction, humiliation, low morale and decreased productivity. Work therefore becomes less meaningful and less fulfilling for such employees.; This ombuds research draws on a combination of applied anthropology and applied language philosophy known as critical hermeneutics. It embodies an interpretive approach to insights about workplace life, in gathering and analyzing data. The study includes in-depth conversations with 15 ombudspersons throughout the United States on their insights about ways in which they interpret parties' viewpoints and translate those viewpoints for parties so they can more readily move through their conflicts. The insights reflect the patterns of data that emerged and which became the basis the analysis.; General findings: (1) The ethic of confidentiality is the reason many people contact the ombudsman in the first place. (2) As off-the-record resources, ombudspersons work with visitors to their office in helping them to understand and interpret job-related conflict in different ways. (3) Ombudspersons help parties explain what is causing them to be concerned by viewing their own capacity with language as a means for them to see the conflict in more useful ways so that they might take more positive action, rather than see the ombudsperson as a tool.; Critical hermeneutic applications enlarge horizons of understanding and create more varied translations of issues, which create possible new worlds of work. Through the work of the ombudsman, acting as interpreter and thereby as translator, and designated neutral party, imagining and appropriating new ways to resolve problems can be realized in helping visitors to our office address job-related concerns as fuller participants.