Comparative Analysis of Text Data in Successful Face-to-Face and Electronic Negotiations

Various combination of Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning methods offer ample opportunities wherever texts are an important element of an application or a research area. Such methods discover patterns and regularities in the data, seek generalization and in effect learn new knowledge. We have employed such methods in learning from a large amount of textual data. Our application is electronic negotiations. The genre of texts found in electronic negotiations may seem limited. It is an important research question whether our methods and findings apply equally well to texts that come from face-to-face negotiations. In order to confirm such more general applicability, we have analyzed comparable collections of texts from electronic and face-to-face negotiations. We present our findings on the extent of similarity between these two related but distinct genres. In this study we have analyzed similarities in the text data of electronic and face-to-face negotiations. The results show that – in certain conditions – vocabulary richness, language complexity and text predictability are similar.This is an expanded version of a paper published in the Proceedings of FINEXIN 2005 (Workshop on the Analysis of Formal and Informal Information Exchange during Negotiations), 31–42, Ottawa, Canada, May 2005.     

Embedding Decision Support in E-Sourcing Tools: Quotes, A Case Study

In the everyday business world, the sourcing process of multiple goods and services usually involves complex negotiations that include discussion of product and service features. Currently, this is a high-cost process due to the scarce use of tools that streamline negotiations and assist purchasing managers' and providers' decision-making. With the advent of Internet-based technologies, it became feasible the idea of tools enabling low-cost, assisted, fluid, on-line dialogs between buyer enterprises and their providers located anywhere. This article presents Quotes, an iSOCO's commercial application that, in addition to cover the whole sequence of sourcing tasks, incorporates decision support facilities based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques that successfully address highly challenging issues in automated negotiation within a single and coherent framework.     

Modeling the Caspian Sea Negotiations

The objective of this study is to identify techniques for predicting the outcome of a negotiation and then apply them to the current negotiations over the legal status of the Caspian Sea, which has been in dispute since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The five coastal states—Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Turkmenistan—entered negotiations in 1993, but have not yet agreed on who owns the waters or the oil and natural gas beneath them. We identify the five well-defined options for resolving the dispute and then discuss the states’ preferences regarding these options. We apply some well-known social choice rules to find the “socially optimal” resolution. Then we review several versions of Fallback Bargaining, which aims to minimize the maximum dissatisfaction of the bargainers, and apply them to the dispute. Finally, we represent the dispute in financial terms and apply several well-known bankruptcy procedures, which are fair division methods for settling monetary claims. We end with some suggestions on how the value of the Caspian seabed resources could be allocated among the five Caspian states.     

Analytical Support to Negotiations: An Empirical Assessment

Twenty-three cases of international negotiation are analyzed and compared to better understand the role of analytical and informational tools in supporting practical negotiators. For each case, data were gathered through interviews with Austrian diplomats on the type and amount of analytical support provided, associated bureaucratic support, and problems encountered, along with a host of key factors about the case itself-the issues, situation, strategies, process, structures, and outcomes. These data were coded and analyzed statistically. It was found that most analytical support is qualitative in nature and can be categorized as information organizing tools, comparison methods and creativity techniques; economic negotiations, in particular, tended to be supported more by quantitative methods, including forecasting and statistical models. Analytical support is particularly important to understand own and other side positions and strategies and to bolster complex negotiations that require issue packaging. A generational gap between senior and mid-level diplomats emerged: junior practitioners expressed a greater interest in analytical support tools. In general, the application of analytical support was perceived positively among practitioners and was correlated with the achievement of treaties and comprehensive solutions. These findings suggest that there needs to be greater investment in developing and providing practical analytical support to negotiators, more supporting infrastructure to facilitate the use of these techniques, and increased training opportunities.     

An Analysis of Design Problems in Combinatorial Procurement Auctions

Traditional auction mechanisms support price negotiations on a single item. The Internet allows for the exchange of much more complex offers in real-time. This is one of the reasons for much research on multidimensional auction mechanisms allowing negotiations on multiple items, multiple units, or multiple attributes of an item, as they can be regularly found in procurement. Combinatorial auctions, for example, enable suppliers to submit bids on bundles of items. A number of laboratory experiments has shown high allocative efficiency in markets with economies of scope. For suppliers it is easier to express cost savings due to bundling (e. g., decreased transportation or production costs). This can lead to significant savings in total cost of the procurement manager. Procurement negotiations exhibit a number of particularities:

A Multi-Agent Model for Overlapping Negotiations

In the last few years, research on multi-agent systems has addressed different aspects of intelligent negotiations using methods developed in different domains including game theory, decision theory, and economic models. The research proposed in Andersson and Sandholm (1999), Sandholm (1993), Sandholm and Lesser (1995) and Aknine et?al. (2004), Aknine (2002) are significant examples. However, only some of this work focuses on problems related to complex negotiations, particularly those concerning new generation applications. This new research raises fundamental difficulties we have encountered, especially in overlapping negotiations and combined negotiations. This article is interested essentially in overlapping negotiations, which include several agent roles in a same negotiation. One or more agents may play each of these roles. This work shows that the high-level negotiation models are necessary in order to control the execution of overlapping negotiation processes, since, in these negotiations we are facing both classical problems of multi-agent negotiations based on two agents’ roles and the problems concerned with the interdependence of these negotiations. Synchronization of these different processes is thus necessary because of the multiplicity of the roles. Thus, this paper presents a formalized negotiation model, which deals with this problem. It gives a theoretical analysis of the suggested model and discusses the results of the experimental evaluation. To perform this evaluation, we use the application of intelligent service agencies on the Internet.     

A Classification of Bargaining Steps and their Impact on Negotiation Outcomes

In this paper, we develop a typology of bargaining steps for multi-issue negotiations, which is derived from possible changes in single issues. By considering all combinations of such changes, we create a consistent classification of steps. This classification forms the basis of an empirical analysis of the impact of different types of bargaining steps on various outcome dimensions of negotiations. We perform an exploratory analysis based on an ex-post analysis of existing negotiation data, which was collected over several years using an Internet-based negotiation support system. Empirical results indicate a strong positive impact of log-rolling strategies and a negative impact of “hard” tactics like insistence on the chances of reaching an agreement. Contrary to expectations, hard tactics do not improve the efficiency of agreements.     

Trade, competition and antidumping—Breaking the impasse!?

Recent reviews of the WTO, while cautioning against broadening its scope, nevertheless agree that antidumping concerns would need to be addressed “somehow”. Obviously, promoting international market access and “fair” competition is difficult in the presence of divergent rules for dealing with private market power and non-border restraints to trade. This is especially true once these differences are taken to justify preferences for highly discretionary trade policy measures in dealing with dumping concerns. Antidumping and the prerequisite competition issues will therefore have to be put onto the agenda of the new round of trade negotiations.     

The Effects of Electronic Collaboration in Distributed Project Management

Abstact The emergence and widespread use of collaborative technologies for distributed project management has opened up opportunities for off-shore outsourcing and collaborative development. However, most tools and techniques for project management focus on on-site, long term relationships and sourcing strategies at a time when inter-organizational relationships are becoming more dynamic and geographically dispersed. This paper uses grounded theory to analyze data on virtual teams' projects. The analysis uncovers “effects” in the way in which distributed projects are managed. These effects relate to coordination, communication and adaptation to distributed electronic work environments. Following an analysis of these electronic collaboration “effects”, a model for distributed project management is presented.     

Negotiators’ Effectiveness with Mixed Agendas: An Empirical Exploration of Tasks,Decisions and Performance Criteria

This article analyzes the performance of 1,060 individuals in dyadic, mixed-agenda negotiations in order to further understanding of individual negotiators’ effectiveness and test the applicability of common negotiation advice. To evaluate performance, both established and new measures were employed. In general, individuals were not effective, although there was wide variation that included highly effective negotiators. In striking contrast to previous research, high-performing individuals’ achievements were not significantly related to maximum joint value creation or to maximum logrolling. Most of the variation in benchmarked (best-practices) effectiveness and in partner-compared effectiveness was explained by individuals’ decisions on three types of agenda items: pure conflict, reverse priorities, and no-conflict. Each had a significant effect (with one exception), but decisions on pure conflict influenced individual effectiveness much more than decisions on either of the other two. Additional results include the extent to which negotiators tended to compromise, logroll, agree on common values, and modify their decisions across items within an item type. Among other implications, these findings argue for richer, more nuanced treatment of individual effectiveness and for advice that is attentive to the structural features of particular negotiations.     

Negotiation and design: Supporting resource allocation decisions through analytical mediation

The common element of all negotiations is change. Design is the key to directing and managing change, and resource allocation is the most critical component of design. Negotiations about change are, therefore, fundamentally, negotiations about design and resource allocation. Negotiations vary along a continuum, from those in which negotiators have consonant interests (share objectives) to discordant ones (disagree about appropriate objectives). The joint distribution of all possible payoffs defines thestructure of the negotiation problem—the opportunities the problem affords and constraints it imposes on negotiators. The analytical mediation approach supports the activities of an impartial, neutral third party who attempts to assist the disputants to reach a mutually satisfactory agreement. It makes use of different types of techniques to support negotiations, depending on their location along the negotiation continuum. Two case studies involving analytical mediation are reported. One case study involves a budgeting exercise, in which the negotiators' interests were essentially consonant. The second case study involves a labor-management contract problem, in which the negotiators' interests were highly discordant.     

A Virtue-Ethics Analysis of Supply Chain Collaboration

Technological advancements in information systems over the past few decades have enabled firms to work with the major suppliers and customers in their supply chain in order to improve the performance of the entire channel. Tremendous benefits for all parties can be realized by sharing information and coordinating operations to reduce inventory requirements, improve quality, and increase customer satisfaction; but the companies must collaborate effectively to bring these gains to fruition. We consider two alternative methods of managing these interfirm supply chain relationships in this article. The first, which we have named “dictatorial collaboration,” occurs when a dominant supply chain entity assumes control of the channel and forces the other firms to follow its edicts. We compare and contrast this method with “sustainable collaboration,” in which the parties share resources and engage in joint problem solving to improve the performance of the system as a whole. We use a virtue ethics lens to describe these methods of relationship management to suggest that sustainable collaboration is preferable to dictatorial collaboration both operationally and ethically in the long run.     

Facilitating Collaboration with Problem Structuring Methods: A Case Study of an Inter-Organisational Construction Partnership

Despite the potential of inter-organisational collaboration to create ‘collaborative advantage’ among participant organisations, not all collaborations realise this potential due to the complexities and challenges faced by potential collaborators. To address these difficulties and increase the likelihood of collaborative success, different forms of intervention approaches for fostering inter-organisational collaboration has been advocated by collaboration researchers and practitioners. These intervention approaches all facilitate interaction and consensus formation among the participants. However their ‘added value’ is procedural rather than substantive in nature. They do not incorporate tools which can enable participants to structure the complexity of the web of factors that are implicated in their collaboration, and thus make it more manageable. This paper argues that problem structuring methods (PSMs), a family of model-based approaches to group decision and negotiation support, are a form of intervention which can provide a balanced attention to both the process and the content of inter-organisational collaboration, and reports the experience of applying a particular PSM to an inter-organisational collaborative partnership in the UK construction industry. Drawing on the rich data generated from the intervention, the paper discusses the impact of the PSM in supporting the joint appreciation activities carried out by collaborators to address their problematic situation. Implications of the experience for the research and practice of PSMs within collaborative contexts are then presented.     

Negotiation Engineering: A Quantitative Problem-Solving Approach to Negotiation

Although they are often complex, negotiations are practical problems that can be solved with the aid of specialized, ad hoc methods. We introduce a problem-solving approach to difficult negotiations inspired by the established solution-oriented discipline of engineering, which we term “Negotiation Engineering”. It is based on the reduction of problems to their most formal structures and the heuristic application of quantitative methods for problem solving. We argue that mathematical language in negotiations helps to increase logical accuracy in negotiation analysis and allows for the use of a variety of existing helpful mathematical tools to achieve a negotiation agreement. We demonstrate the practicability and usefulness of this approach using four case studies in the area of international diplomacy in which Negotiation Engineering was applied to achieve negotiation solutions.     

Corporate Responsibility in Scandinavian Supply Chains

This article examines corporate responsibility in the supply chains of four of the largest Scandinavian multinational corporations – IKEA, Nokia, Novo Nordisk, and StatoilHydro – and offers two key findings. First, these Scandinavian companies have all implemented responsible supply chain practices where suppliers in developing nations, and the communities of these suppliers, are engaged as key stakeholders and treated as partners. Second, these supply chain practices all share the common bond of having honesty and the establishment of trust-based relationships at their foundation. As a result, these Scandinavian companies have developed a “cooperative advantage” in their ability to form successful, long-term partnerships in their respective supply chains.     

East Meets West: Tacit Messages about Business Ethics in Stories Told by Chinese Managers

This article examines how culture influences Chinese managers’ perception of some western management instruments, such as codes of ethics and performance evaluation systems. The research is based on analyzing the tacit messages in “stories told” by managers and reviewing some of the barriers that may hinder understanding. Major obstacles lie in failing to ‘read’ each other’s cultures correctly. Assumptions and biases are left alone instead of being addressed openly. Western management systems and tools do not necessarily function equally well in the Chinese culture, unless they are reassessed and adapted. Some recommendations for managers and further research are given.     

The Effects of Framing on Inter-group Negotiation

The present paper explores the way in which groups cognitively represent information framed as danger and the way in which such collective cognitive representations influence group performance during inter-group negotiations. One hundred and two participants were distributed over 34 three-person groups and were involved in a negotiation game developed by Lewicki et al. (1999, Negotiation: readings, exercises and cases. McGraw-Hill, Boston). The groups were organized in 17 pairs and each pair played the negotiation game in two rounds. The game rules and the available resources were the same for both groups, but one of the groups in each pair received the game information framed as “danger”, while the other group in the pair received a neutral framing. The groups with a “danger” frame developed a more defensive strategy during negotiations, adopted more often a collaborative approach and had a significantly lower performance as compared to the groups in the non-framing condition.     

An Experimental Investigation of Virtual Negotiations with Dynamic Plots

Advanced information and communications technologies provide the basis for virtual negotiations where competitors continuously alter their assignments in real-time in response to market changes. Dynamic plots, which depict the competitors' possible profits and hints for how to improve them, provide a way to support these types of negotiation settings. This research reports on an experimental assessment of dynamic plots for visual interactive negotiations. Dynamic plots are compared to an alternative dynamic method of real-time negotiation support using selected conflict situations to test five hypotheses. The results of the laboratory assessment provide evidence for the hypotheses that dynamic plots stimulate negotiations, provide effective support to reach efficient, system optimal, and equitable solutions, and are well received as negotiation tools in real-time settings.     

Cooperative communication: Computerware and humanware

This article emphasizes the combined requirements of computer systems and humanistics. In cooperative computing, negotiations can be used as a basic paradigm by which different roles and their requisites can be identified—the facilitator, the mediator, and the negotiator. The negotiation‐cooperation process has a logical sequence of agreements, definition of terms, objectives, mode of operation, common security measures concerning integrity and liability, handling protocols, etc. The cooperation is based on models of the subject and the partners—i.e., a minimum of three models should be matched. The usual methods of human negotiations supported by metacommunication should have a computer‐realizable substitute. All these subjects are outgrowths of recent research in artificial intelligence (knowledge‐based systems) and cognitive psychology; some experiences are reported in the field. However, the main task is human‐oriented—education of people for this new powerful means of coexistence.