Paper Title
Dispute Resolution: Pumping the Brakes on Improvisational Management using Mediation as a Governance Tool

Abstract
While leaders and managers of the firm are constantly charged with the responsibility of converting uncertainty and ambiguity into actionable decisions often with little or no warning or planning, the tendency to “run unchecked” demands a governance structure to provide guardrails in effect limiting and reigning in improvisation. Improvisation, as demonstrated in prior research, allows for the managerial navigation of environments in conditions of uncertainty or ambiguity. Mediation entails a mutual desire to reach an accommodation founded in “fairness” not by Arbitration and forced decision making to resolve control and governance issues. Mediation incorporates the party’s intelligence, integrity, charisma, fully aware that Improvisational Management is not independent of governance or control, and that control is more frequently achieved through Mediation rather than other potentially forced solutions. In previous papers we have defined IDR (International Dispute Resolution). We established the control effect of IDR on unbridled Improvisational Management, reflecting the independence and autonomy of top-level decision-making under conditions of governance oversight. In this paper, we look at the specific IDR element of “Mediation” and apply it as a tool for oversight and control.