The Art and Science of Negotiation.

Support for international negotiations requires integration of decision-theoretic approaches with communication facilities, and different visualization modes. In addition, negotiation support systems (NSS) should also be tailored to different cultural and educational backgrounds of their users. While there have been studies on cross-cultural negotiations involving simple game or economic models, there have been no experiments with NSS in international and cross-cultural contexts. At the same time the emergence and quickly spreading use of the World Wide Web (WWW) and electronic commerce indicates the potential of NSS supporting commercial transactions across borders. This paper presents INSPIRE, the first Web-based NSS that has been tested and used in teaching and training in several countries. Developed in the context of a cross-cultural study of decision making and negotiation, it has been primarily used to conduct and study negotiation via WWW as well as in teaching and training. The architecture of INSPIRE, which relies heavily on the net-centric computing paradigm and object oriented design, is also discussed.

http://interneg.concordia.ca/views/bodyfiles/paper/1997/05.pdf

WWW-based negotiation support: design, implementation, and use

In modern transportation systems, the potential for further decreasing the costs of fulfilling customer requests is severely limited while market competition is constantly reducing revenues. However, increased competitiveness through cost reductions can be achieved if freight carriers cooperate in order to balance their request portfolios. Participation in such coalitions can benefit the entire coalition, as well as each participant individually, thus reinforcing the market position of the partners. The work presented in this paper uniquely combines features of routing and scheduling problems and of cooperative game theory. In the first part, the profit margins resulting from horizontal cooperation among freight carriers are analysed. It is assumed that the structure of customer requests corresponds to that of a pickup and delivery problem with time windows for each freight carrier. In the second part, the possibilities of sharing these profit margins fairly among the partners are discussed. The Shapley value can be used to determine a fair allocation. Numerical results for real-life and artificial instances are presented.

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Horizontal cooperation among freight carriers: request allocation and profit sharing

In fuzzy Multi-criteria decision-making problems, the ranking of alternatives must take into account their fuzzy scores in all criteria, the weights assigned to each decision criterion, the possible difficulties of comparing two alternatives when one is significantly better than the other on a subset of criteria, but much worse on at least one criterion from the complementary subset of criteria, and the decision maker’s attitude towards the risk associated with evaluation.

The Shapley Value

The paper presents a model for the collaboration among independent freight forwarding entities. In the modern highly competitive transportation branch freight forwarders reduce their fulfillment costs by exploiting different execution modes (self-fulfillment and subcontraction). For self-fulfillment they use their own vehicles to execute the requests and for subcontracting they forward the orders to external freight carriers. Further enhancement of competitiveness can be achieved if the freight forwarders cooperate in coalitions in order to balance their request portfolios. Participation in such a coalition gains additional profit for the entire coalition and for each participant, therefore reinforcing the market position of the partners. The integrated operational transport problem as well as existing collaboration approaches are introduced. The presented model for collaboration is based on theoretical foundations in the field of combinatorial auctions and operational research game theory. It is applicable for coalitions of freight forwarders, especially for the collaboration of Profit Centres within large freight forwarding companies. The proposed theoretical approach and the presented collaboration model are suitable for a coalition of freight forwarding companies with nearly similar potential on the market.

Collaborating freight forwarding enterprises

Cooperative game solution concepts to a cost allocation problem

The paper reviews the methodology of multi-objective modeling and optimization used in decision support based on computerized analytical models (as opposed to logical models used in expert systems) that represent expert knowledge in a given field. The essential aspects of this methodology relate to its flexibility: modeling and optimization methods are treated not as goals in themselves but as tools that help a sovereign user (an analyst or a decision maker) to interact with the model, to generate and analyze various decision options, to learn about possible outcomes of these decisions. Although the applications of such methods in negotiation and mediation support is scarce yet, their flexibility increases essentially the chances of such applications. Various aspects of negotiation and mediation methods related to multi-objective optimization and game theory are also reviewed. A possible application of the MCBARG system for supporting negotiation related to the acid rain problem is briefly summarized.

The role of multi-objective optimization in negotiation and mediation support

A growing interest in methodology and applications of multiperson decision support systems is observed. In particular, approaches based on multicriteria optimization in group decision problems are subject of the papers by Korhonen, Moskowitz, Wallenius, Zionts (1986), Jarke, Jelassi, Shakun (1987), Kersten (1988), DeSanctis, Gallupe (1987), Korhonen and Wallenius (1989) and others. On the other hand there exists the developed theory of bargaining problem started by Nash (1950), continued by Raiffa (1953), Harsanyi, Selten (1972), Kalai, Smorodinsky (1975), Roth (1979), Thomson (1980), Imai (1983) and others. It seems to be reasonable to construct systems supporting negotiations combining the multicriteria optimization approach, and achievements of the theory and the practical experience in bargaining. However in this case new theoretical problems arise related to a generalization of the solution concepts and their axiomatization, a construction of interactive processes making easier the decision analysis of the bargaining situation and supporting the negotiation.

Some New Results in Interactive Approach to Multicriteria Bargaining

The paper relates to construction of computer based systems for decision support in negotiations. A special case of distributed decision making — a class of bargaining situations is considered. DSS (decision support systems) utilizing mathematical model of decision situation can serve as a tool supporting unilateral and multilateral analysis made by negotiating sides (players). A problem of players’ manipulations is discussed. What does it mean fairness? How can players manipulate using DSS? Can we minimize the players’ manipulations applying game theoretical solution concepts in DSS? How can interactive procedures be constructed? This sort of questions is discussed in the paper.

Lech Kruś

Papers

Cooperative game solution concepts to a cost allocation problem

The role of multi-objective optimization in negotiation and mediation support

Some New Results in Interactive Approach to Multicriteria Bargaining

Multicriteria Decision Support in Bargaining, a Problem of Players’ Manipulations

Soft multicriteria computing supporting decisions on the Forex market