Small Business  Better Ways to Handle Business Conflict  Instead
of litigation, dispute resolution expert L. Randolph Lowry urges
entrepreneurs to manage conflict themselves or take advantage of
mediation  Conflict between entrepreneurs and their partners,
suppliers, employees, and customers hampers operations and often
contributes to business failures, says L. Randolph Lowry,
president of Lipscomb University in Nashville. He encourages
business owners and managers to learn and use conflict
management techniques and low-cost or free legal mediation.
Lowry spoke recently to Smart Answers columnist Karen E. Klein.
Edited excerpts of their conversation follow. Karen E. Klein:
You have been at the forefront of the dispute resolution
movement in the U.S. What was the reaction when you founded the
Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution at Pepperdine University
in 1986? L. Randolph Lowry: At that time, no one had heard of
it. Now every law school teaches mediation, and there are about
400 nonprofit neighborhood jus