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Organizational Mediators Siding With or Against the Powerful Party? 1
Author(s) -
Laskewitz Peter,
Vliert Evert,
Dreu Carsten K. W.
Publication year - 1994
Publication title -
journal of applied social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.822
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1559-1816
pISSN - 0021-9029
DOI - 10.1111/j.1559-1816.1994.tb00564.x
Subject(s) - mediator , social psychology , legitimacy , psychology , power (physics) , disadvantage , mediation , law and economics , political science , law , sociology , politics , medicine , physics , quantum mechanics
Instead of being impartial, a mediator may side with one party as a function of the disputants' power differences, the mediator's legitimacy judgments, or the disputants' capacity to sanction the mediator. According to the power balancing theory, a mediator sides with the party that has a power disadvantage vis‐à‐vis the other party. The theory on siding postulates that the mediator sides with the party having more legitimate claims and/or more sanction capacity. A questionnaire study showed that organizational mediators side with the less powerful rather than the more powerful party, especially when this weaker party has equal rather than less capacity to sanction the mediator. Thus, the tendency to balance power is moderated by the mediator's self‐interest. Additionally, mediators tend to favor the party they see as more legitimate.