Are conciliation and mediation effectively the same thing?
Conciliation and mediation both involve the intervention of a third party attempting to resolve a disagreement. Although these terms seem interchangeable they do have different meanings in different contexts. The differences between the two can be quite subtle and largely involve differences in approach and techniques employed by practitioners. The clearest difference between mediation and conciliation is that mediation is mostly used to describe dispute resolution at the pre-legal stage. For instance in the UK ACAS provide a mediation service for employment disputes where no legal proceedings are in hand or even contemplated. They offer conciliation where an application has already been made to an Industrial Tribunal. Mediation is also offered in divorce to settle divorce terms by agreement rather than using the full legal process although any agreement reached still needs a formal court order approving the terms.
