The applicability of mediation concepts and skills to housing management

Abstract

In Hong Kong, there are so many different types of community disputes relate to housing management. Sometimes the complaints could be as trivial as casing nuisance to the premises nearby or serious as breach of covenant or legislation. Since dispute may easily rise between owners in the multi-storey building, especially in the high density of living environment in Hong Kong, dispute resolution becomes a “day-to-day” work of housing managers. However, housing managers should not only aim to resolve the dispute effectively, but also to keep maintaining the long-term relationship between the residents and the housing managers themselves, where good and long-term relationship between the disputing parties is one of the important tasks for mediators. Thus, there is a prima facie interrelated relationship between mediation and housing management, and this relationship is relatively important.

Through empirical study, literature review and in-depth interviews, this dissertation has evaluated the applicability of mediation concepts and skills to housing management by comparing their similarities and dissimilarities. The findings suggested that the objectives of dispute resolution for housing managers and mediators are similar, however, the ultimate goals, approaches or skills are not the same.

During the study on the applicability of mediation concepts and skills to housing management, we found that some legal and practical constraints could apply most of the key mediation concepts. For example, the doctrine of confidentiality is found as inapplicable to housing management during the dispute resolution process. The mediation concepts are therefore considered not applicable to housing management. Nevertheless, the skills possessed by the mediators, especially the communication skills and negotiation skills are considered applicable to housing management in the course of dispute resolution.

To achieve the best outcome of dispute resolution, housing managers should act as conciliator as what they are doing but the improvements on communication and negotiation skills are required. Therefore, recommendations are made to the management companies, academic institutions and trade institutes for provision of relevant trainings to the practitioners in order to resolve the disputes in the estates effectively, so that the goal of improving the living conditions in order to turn house into home can be achieved and the harmony between neighbourhoods can be maintained.