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After being admitted to legal practice in 1982 I returned to my alma mater, Stellenbosch University, South Africa, in 1983 to take up a position first as senior lecturer in law and thereafter professor of law until March 1997. During this time I was for a while an associate at a human rights firm based in Stellenbosch and chairperson of the local advice office. This was at a juncture when South Africa was under two separate states of emergency. My experience at the firm and the advice office assisting indigent people who could not afford access to justice made me acutely aware of the limits of the law in providing justice in a context where people were either deprived of basic rights, or unable to afford the means for exercising them. This is what really sparked my interest in negotiation, mediation and other consensus-seeing approaches to conflict and dispute resolution as alternatives to recourse to the law. I left the law faculty in 1997 to become a "pracademic", spending part of my time practicing as a specialist in the areas of employment relations, negotiation, mediation and dispute / conflict resolution and the rest teaching at South Africa's premier business schools, Stellenbosch University’s Graduate School of Business (USB) and the Graduate School of Business, University of Cape Town (GSB). Since September 2014 I spend most of my time as professor of management practice at Vlerick Business School in Belgium (www.vlerick.com) teaching and doing research in those fields, while still conducting mediations in both South Africa and Belgium. Apart from my responsibilities at Vlerick, I also hold appointments as professor extraordinaire at the USB, and as visiting professor at IESEG Paris and the European Faculty of Law, Ljubljana, Slovenia. I am a certified mediator with the ADR Grp (UK), IMI (The Hague), Conflict Dyna,is (South Africa) and CEDR (UK) and until 2014 served as external consultant to the World Bank Group's Office of Mediation Services. Between 2016 and 2018 I served as chair of the Academic Committee of the IMI's Global Pound Conference Series (https://www.imimediation.org/research/gpc/series-data-and-reports/) I currently serve as a member of the leadership group of the International Negotiation Initiative (http://www.ininegotiation.org).
I have mediated since 1990, having been trained originally by the Independent Mediation Services of SA (IMSSA). My experience was originally limited to labour disputes but since 2003 I have increasingly become involved in other fields, including civil, commercial and corporate disputes. I have worked in a wide range of industries, including shipping, financial services, logistics, energy, health and education. I am a certified mediator with the ADR Grp (UK), IMI (The Hague), Conflict Dynamis (South Africa) and CEDR (UK).
I prefer to adapt the style to the dispute at hand, fitting the process to the problem instead of the other way around.
Civil & commercial
Labour
Corporate / board / business
Workplace
Employment
On application
Conflict Dynamics ADR Group IMI CEDR
Available please contact me at [email protected] for further information and up-to-date references.
Trained as mediator and arbitrator, IMSSA, ADR Group, Conflict Dynamics
Accredited mediator with CEDR
At Vlerick Business School, Belgium (www.vlerick.com) I teach and do research in the field of mediation, negotiation and conflict leadership. Prior to joining Vlerick in 2014 I was also part of the mediation training faculty for Conflict Dynamics, South Africa.
A full list of my publications and presentations are available on request at [email protected]
A full list of my publications and presentations are available on request at [email protected]
IMI Code of Professional Conduct
Conflict Dynamics Code of Conduct
IMI Professional Conduct Assessment Process
Conflict Dynamics
Stalker Hutchison Admiral, R 1,000,000 per claim