Mediation is growing in popularity across the world as a way of resolving disputes, particularly in the commercial sector. This book draws on extensive first-hand direct and comprehensive observations of commercial mediations conducted from the beginning to the end of the process in order to show how the process of mediation works in practice and how the process is viewed both by the parties and the mediator.

Through the use of an ethnographic method the book examines how mediation is a process inextricably linked to negotiation, offering an illuminating reconceptualization of the mediation process and mediator intervention within that process.