Observations of business ethicist, Dr David Molyneaux, on mediation:

“What to me was most fascinating was the mediator’s pragmatic approach to the range of possible valuations ~ a sort of 'Alexander with the Gordian knot' ~ and then going on to help the parties to see that they too needed to do the same. Thereby they came to their own determination of a fair outcome.

I felt that one of many useful lessons was the possible contrast with the other 'commercial' possibility ~ arbitration. An arbitrator might indeed ~ with a certain amount of luck and gut judgement ~ come up with the same figure and both parties might accept such an 'imposed' technical solution. But this technical solution was so much weaker than the mediated one. Superficially, coincidentally, the result might have been the same.  But the power of mediation was that the mediator had brought the parties to determine and agree that for themselves. Mediation maintained their pride and dignity in a way any imposed figure or external judgement could never replicate.  Professional mediation is superior not just to courts but to the likes of 'expert' single commercial arbitration also. 

This was embodied, I think, at the end, in the courteous request by one party of the mediator as to whether he and his colleagues should shake hands with the other party after the agreement. It was a small thing but I doubt that, after an arbitration, anyone voluntarily seeks to shake hands  ~ or display the respect and gratitude that was so evident towards the mediator. The parties may never again like or trust each other, but they could show courtesy and respect, symbolic of maturity and self-determination, because they had themselves been respected - and been enabled to be something beyond mere compulsory recipients of someone else's arbitrary opinion.

In short, it had been a process that recognised them as the high-achieving, rational adults that they had clearly proved themselves to be in other aspects of their careers; the outcome had maintained a sense of personal integrity for them all.”