Procedural justice in Alternative Dispute Resolution: Fairness judgments among users of Financial Ombudsman services in Germany and the United Kingdom

This article uses the lens of procedural justice theory to explore peoples’ experiences of an alternative dispute resolution (ADR) model: ombudsman services. We focus on two specific services that deal with complaints about financial services in Germany and the UK. Using and expanding upon procedural justice theory we ask two key questions: is the complaints process more important than its outcome; and does the importance of process and outcome vary between countries? In both countries we find a strong association between perceptions of procedural justice and outcomes such as overall perceptions of fairness, confidence in the ombudsman service, and decision acceptance. Against expectations, these associations are broadly invariant across the German and UK samples; but, despite this, all else equal German respondents expressed consistently more positive views. Our data add some nuance to the existing literature on procedural justice and suggest that the national context also plays a role in people’s decision-acceptance of ombudsmen. We suggest that national legal cultures provide for a framework of rules that guide people’s perceptions and behaviors in legal, quasi-legal and related environments

How Do Complainants Experience the Ombuds Procedure? Detecting cultural patterns of disputing behavior: A comparative analysis of users that complain about financial services

Are systems we use for resolving disputes designed in a user-friendly manner? What motivates us to accept a decision handed down by an ombuds? There is scant empirical evidence to help understand what users of ombuds expect from them and what informs these expectations. Yet, in a recent wide-ranging study Creutzfeldt (2016) asked people who had just been through an ombuds procedure about precisely these issues. Exploring the importance of fairness perceptions for ombuds procedures, one of the findings of the project was that decision-acceptance (and trust) was linked to users being heard, having a voice, and especially their “first impressions” of the ombuds. Does this finding hold true across different jurisdictions, though? By focusing on users of the German insurance ombuds (Versicherungsombudsmann) and the Financial Ombudsman Services (FOS) in the UK, this chapter will explore how procedural justice matters in different ways in different legal cultures. The data reveal culturally distinct narratives about expectations towards ombuds, which we suggest is partially a result of the different legal socialization experiences of people in Germany and the UK. Having identified patterns within the private sector, lessons learned for the public sector are discussed. We conclude this chapter with some thoughts as to how this study might direct future understandings of user experience and future research

Understanding how and when change occurs in the administrative justice system: the ombudsman/ tribunal partnership as a catalyst for reform?

This article explores the ongoing condition of the ombudsman sector through models of change adopted from the social science literature. Debates about change are fleshed out through an analysis of the ombudsman/tribunal’s partnership initiative currently underway. As well as providing an explanation for the slow process of reform, the article highlights the need for further research into the partnership initiative to detail the strengths, weaknesses and sustainability of such bottom-up reform agendas in the administrative justice system. We conclude that the impact of each individual initiative is likely to be minor but as a process they represent important moments of institutional learning which, in the context of current crisis, could operate as catalysts for major administrative justice reform