Unpacking the Standing Neutral: A Cost Effective and Common-Sense Approach for Preventing Conflict

Let\u27s face it. You don\u27t need to be a Nobel-prize winning economist to know that contracts are inherently incomplete. No lawyer has yet crafted the perfect contract that will anticipate every eventuality. Problems and unexpected events are always around the corner. Long-term contractual relationships are especially vulnerable to the damage caused by friction in relationships, particularly when this friction turns into a formal dispute. In far too many relationships the parties do not perceive a need to engage in conventional conflict resolution until they begin to experience real pain. By that time, they have blamed each other for their troubles. Unfortunately, this usually means that the parties\u27 relationship has reached a breaking point, which can lead to calling on their respective lawyers who are not typically incentivized or instinctively inclined to resolve conflicts constructively in the way best suited to the preservation of the relationship. And if typical negotiations fail, the next step is calling in a mediator, and perhaps eventually ending up in arbitration or the court system. To avoid these harmful escalations of conflict in business relationships, this paper argues for the proactive use of a Standing Neutral – a trusted, independent expert advisor (or a panel of three advisors) – chosen by the contracting parties at the onset of the relationship with the clear goal to maintain a healthy relationship. A Standing Neutral process can best be described as a proactive, quick, informal, flexible, adaptable, non-adversarial, neutral, expert, preferably nonbinding, process for preventing and achieving the earliest possible solution to problems and preventing potential disputes. This white paper includes five parts. It will help you understand the why, what and how of using a Standing Neutral for preventing and managing conflicts. Part 1 explains why the time is ripe to consider collaborative approaches for resolving conflicts Part 2 shares research which supports using a Standing Neutral, suggesting that such preventive conflict resolution techniques are not simply a new fad, but perhaps one of the best-kept secrets that should be widely unlocked and adopted for widespread use Part 3 highlights the what and how of using a Standing Neutral Part 4 shares examples of the Standing Neutral concept in practice Part 5 explores the costs and benefits of using a Standing Neutral In addition, we provide a comprehensive Appendix on how to design a dispute prevention, de-escalation and resolution system. The bottom line? It is YOUR bottom line. Using a Standing Neutral is a most effective and efficient way to govern and improve today’s modern commercial relationships

Contracting outsourced services with collaborative key performance indicators

While service outsourcing may benefit from the application of performance‐based contracts (PBCs), the implementation of such contracts is usually challenging. Service performance is often not only dependent on supplier effort but also on the behavior of the buying firm. Existing research on performance‐based contracting provides very limited understanding on how this challenge may be overcome. This article describes a design science research project that develops a novel approach to buyer–supplier contracting, using collaborative key performance indicators (KPIs). Collaborative KPIs evaluate and reward not only the supplier contribution to customer performance but also the customer's behavior to enable this. In this way, performance‐based contracting can also be applied to settings where supplier and customer activities are interdependent, while traditional contracting theories suggest that output controls are not effective under such conditions. In the collaborative KPI contracting process, indicators measure both supplier and customer (buying firm) performance and promote collaboration by being defined through a collaborative process and by focusing on end‐of‐process indicators. The article discusses the original case setting of a telecommunication service provider experiencing critical problems in outsourcing IT services. The initial intervention implementing this contracting approach produced substantial improvements, both in performance and in the relationship between buyer and supplier. Subsequently, the approach was tested and evaluated in two other settings, resulting in a set of actionable propositions on the efficacy of collaborative KPI contracting. Our study demonstrates how defining, monitoring, and incentivizing the performance of specific processes at the buying firm can help alleviate the limitations of traditional performance‐based contracting when the supplier's liability for service performance is difficult to verify

Azoospermia with variable testicular histology after 7 months of treatment with a deslorelin implant in toms.

Item does not contain fulltextThe main aim of the study was to assess whether the longer use of a GnRH-agonist implant (deslorelin 4.7 mg, Suprelorin) in toms would lead to the suppression of spermatogenesis comparable with histologic appearance in juvenile animals as was previously described in dogs. The other aims were to monitor the progression of the testes size decrease and development of azoospermia 5 to 7 months after treatment with a GnRH-agonist implant. In animals, 5, 6, and 7 months after GnRH-agonist implant insertion, variable histological appearance of germinal epithelium was found, when tubules with elongating spermatids, round spermatids, spermatocytes, and spermatogonia as the most developed germinal cells were found in each group of toms. In all male cats, 5, 6, and 7 months after implant insertion, testosterone concentrations and testes size significantly differed between the first and the last visit. All animals, except one tom castrated 5 months after implant insertion, developed complete azoospermia. However, in this tom, all spermatozoa were immotile. Treatment with the subcutaneous GnRH-agonist implant was well tolerated, and no treatment-related adverse effects were noted. These results reported the efficacy of 4.7-mg deslorelin implant (Suprelorin) during its 7 months of use. The complete azoospermia confirms its contraceptive effect. However, the histologic evaluation revealed a great individual variability in the degree of spermatogenic suppression. The question as to whether spermatogenesis in toms can be suppressed in all males to the level of spermatogonia/primary spermatocytes after prolonged exposure to deslorelin has yet to be answered

Cooperative quality investment in outsourcing and its impact on supply-chain performance

This paper highlights the importance of cooperative quality investment (CQI) strategy and proposes a simple proportional investment sharing schedule in outsourcing of a supply chain, which consists of a single contract manufacturer (CM) and one original equipment manufacturers (OEM) whose demands are both sensitive to price and product quality. A three-stage dynamic game-theoretic framework is applied to describe decisions of every entity. In particular, we analyze two possible decision structures of quality choice: the CM optimally sets product quality and the OEM chooses product quality. By the backward induction approach, we obtain the analytical equilibrium solutions for each decision scenario. We find that if the CM is willing to share sufficient large investment fraction, the CQI strategy will be beneficial to quality enhancement no matter who sets product quality level. On the respect of equilibrium payoffs (profits), this study shows that each of the players always prefers to have complete control on quality choice with implementation of the CQI strategy. In addition, the supply-chain performance can be improved by practicing the CQI strategy. Furthermore, we explicitly put forwards the conditions for realizing this improvement. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014