From "my court" to "our court": mediation as a tool for organizational transformation
Intra-organizational Mediation, Change Management, and Team Culture in the Courts of First Instance. The implementation of the Courts of First Instance represents one of the most significant organizational transformations in the administration of justice in recent decades. This is not simply a change of name, nor is it merely an operation limited to redistributing offices, schedules, or job positions. The reform introduces a different way of understanding judicial organization: it progressively abandons the operation based on relatively autonomous units and moves toward an integrated, cross-cutting, and functionally interdependent structure. This transition requires viewing the justice system not only as a set of bodies with defined powers, but as a true ecosystem of professional relationships. Judges, magistrates, court clerks, general staff, common services, specialized sections, external professionals, and citizens now interact within a much more intensive framework of coordination. The greater the interdependence, the greater the need to organize communication channels, clarify roles, prevent dysfunctions, and manage internal conflicts before they become structural problems. In this context, intra-organizational mediation emerges as a particularly useful tool for supporting change. It does not aim to replace jurisdictional, administrative, or procedural powers, nor to create informal spaces lacking safeguards. Its function is technical and organizational: to listen, organize, facilitate, clarify, and help build operational solutions to conflicts that arise within the judicial organization itself. 1. The Court of First Instance changes its structure and also its relationships. The traditional model of the single-judge court fostered a culture of autonomous operation for years. Each body developed its own organizational criteria, its own procedural models, its own practices… Read more
