Some conflicts seem to defy resolution. Marked by longevity, recurrent violence, and militant agendas, these intractable conflicts refuse to be settled either on the battlefield or at the negotiating table. The longer they fester, the stronger the international community's inclination to lose heart and to turn away. But, explain the authors of this provocative volume, effective mediation in intractable conflicts is possible if the mediator knows what to do and when to do it.Written from the mediator's point of view, "Taming Intractable Conflicts" lays out the steps involved in tackling the most stubborn of conflicts. It first puts mediation in a larger context, exploring why mediators choose or decline to become involved, what happens when they get involved for the wrong reasons, and the impact of the mediator's institutional and political environment. It then discusses best mediation tradecraft at different stages: at the beginning of the engagement, when the going gets very rough, during the settlement negotiations, and in the post-settlement implementation stage.Forceful, concise, and highly readable, "Taming Intractable Conflicts" serves not only as a hands on guide for would-be mediators but also as a powerful argument for students of conflict management that intractable conflicts are not beyond the reach of mediation."

Howard E. Gruber has changed the domain of creative studies in several ways: by making it more realistic with his systems theory, introducing the idea of "a theory of the individual" and developing a method to this ends, and positioning the domain of creative studies where it can build on the domain of morality. He has opened more than a few eyes to a new domain--moral creativity--and this special issue shows Gruber's influence in this regard. As a result, this first Festschrift of Creativity Research Journal provides readers with unique, novel, and creative ideas.

The 10th-anniversary edition of the New York Times business bestseller-now updated with "Answers to Ten Questions People Ask" We attempt or avoid difficult conversations every day-whether dealing with an underperforming employee, disagreeing with a spouse, or negotiating with a client. From the Harvard Negotiation Project, the organization that brought you Getting to Yes, Difficult Conversations provides a step-by-step approach to having those tough conversations with less stress and more success. you'll learn how to: · Decipher the underlying structure of every difficult conversation · Start a conversation without defensiveness · Listen for the meaning of what is not said · Stay balanced in the face of attacks and accusations · Move from emotion to productive problem solving

The Palgrave Encyclopedia of the Possible represents a comprehensive resource for researchers and practitioners interested in an emerging multidisciplinary area within psychology and the social sciences: the study of how we engage with and cultivate the possible within self, society and culture. Far from being opposed either to the actual or the real, the possible engages with concrete facts and experiences, with the result of transforming them. This encyclopedia examines the notion of the possible and the concepts associated with it from standpoints within psychology, philosophy, sociology, neuroscience and logic, as well as multidisciplinary fields of research including anticipation studies, future studies, complexity theory and creativity research. Presenting multiple perspectives on the possible, the authors consider the distinct social, cultural and psychological processes - e.g., imagination, counterfactual thinking, wonder, play, inspiration, and many others - that define our engagement with new possibilities in domains as diverse as the arts, design and business.

We are entering a new era—an era of impact. The largest intergenerational transfer of wealth in history will soon be under way, bringing with it the potential for huge increases in philanthropic funding. Engine of Impact shows how nonprofits can apply the principles of strategic leadership to attract greater financial support and leverage that funding to maximum effect. As Good to Great author Jim Collins writes in his foreword, this book offers "a detailed roadmap of disciplined thought and action for turning a good nonprofit into one that can achieve great impact at scale." William F. Meehan III and Kim Starkey Jonker identify seven essential components of strategic leadership that set high-achieving organizations apart from the rest of the nonprofit sector. Together, these components form an "engine of impact"—a system that organizations must build, tune, and fuel if they hope to make a real difference in the world. Drawing on decades of teaching, advising, grantmaking, and research, Meehan and Jonker provide an actionable guide that executives, staff, board members, and donors can use to jumpstart their own performance and to achieve extraordinary results for their organization. Along with setting forth best practices using real-world examples, the authors outline common management challenges faced by nonprofits, showing how these challenges differ from those faced by for-profit businesses in important and often-overlooked ways. By offering crucial insights on the fundamentals of nonprofit management, this book will help leaders equip their organizations to fire on all cylinders and unleash the full potential of the nonprofit sector. Visit www.engineofimpact.org for additional information.

Inside Man presents readers with an exercise in modeling human ways of being—thinking, feeling, acting. This book does not merely introduce models, but also attempts to teach modeling and to produce, within the reader, the predispositions and attitudes of the modeler: a distance from the individual whose behavior is modeled, an engineering approach to the model-building process, a (self)-critical approach to the model testing and elaboration process, and a pedagogical and a therapeutic approach to enacting and communicating models. Author Mihnea C. Moldoveanu makes the process and the phenomenon of modeling transparent and explicit, and clarifies the reasons for which modeling human behavior has to be an interactive process between the modeler and the modeled. This perspective situates Inside Man at the intersection of analytical and computational thinking about rationality, reasoning, choice and thinking, and the tradition of action science and action research.

OCS, the International Workshop on Optical SuperComputing, is a new annual forum for research presentations on all facets of optical computing for solving hard computation tasks. Optical computing devices have the potential to build the very next computing infrastructure. Given the frequency limitations and cross-talk phenomena, as well as the soft-errors, of electronic devices on one hand, and the natural parallelism of optical computing devices, as well as the advances in ?ber optics and optical switches, on the other hand, optical c- puting is becoming increasingly marketable. The focus of the workshop is on research surrounding the theory, design, speci?cation, analysis, implementation, and application of optical supercomputers. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: design of optical computing devices; electro-optics devices for interacting with optical computing devices; practical implementations; analysis of existing devices and case studies; optical and laser switching technologies; applications and algorithms for optical devices; and alpha practical, x-rays and nano-technologies for optical computing. The First OSC workshop was held on August 26th, 2008, in Vienna, Austria, co-located with the 7th International Conference on Unconventional Computing. This volume contains eight contributions selected by the program committee andtwoinvitedpapers. Allsubmittedpaperswerereadandevaluatedbyatleast three program committee members, assisted by external reviewers. The review process was aided by the EasyChair system. OSC 2008 was organized in cooperation with OSA the Optical Society of America. The support of Ben-Gurion University and Babe?-Bolyai University is also gratefully acknowledged.