Supporting Interactive Multi-Attribute Electronic Negotiations with ebXML

The inter-organizational character of electronic negotiations raises social, legal, organizational and technical research questions. One of the main weaknesses of electronic negotiation applications today is that they do not sufficiently take into consideration the integration requirements that stem from the latter two of these aspects. Our objective is to design and build an electronic negotiation application that complies with these requirements. A major task within this work is the modeling and specification of the negotiation process and negotiation objects. To meet the integration requirements, the use of standards is essential. In our paper, we apply the ebXML framework to the task of modeling interactive bilateral multi-attribute electronic negotiations. For this purpose, we introduce the negotiation process flow underlying our application scenario. We explain the significance of ebXML for standardized business transaction modeling. We develop ebXML process and object definitions and suggest modifications of and additions to the current ebXML standard. Finally, we discuss the scope and the limitations of our concept and prototype.     

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.     

Negotiating with the Chinese: Are They More Likely to Use Unethical Strategies?

It is always a challenge to deal with ethical dilemmas in negotiations and it is even more difficult when the other party is from a different culture. Understanding the differences between what is ethically appropriate and what is not in an international context has thus become important for a better understanding of different negotiation practices across the globe. This study explores the likelihood of Chinese negotiators’ using unethical strategies in negotiations by examining Chinese managerial employees’ perceived appropriateness of five categories of ethically questionable strategies. The results show that, in comparison with their counterparts from the USA, Chinese managers are more likely to consider it appropriate to use ethically questionable negotiation strategies in all five categories except the traditional bargaining strategies. In addition, contrary to the West where women tend to maintain higher ethical standards, no gender difference is found in China in the perceived appropriateness of using these strategies in all but one category. Implications for negotiation practitioners and international managers that often participate in international negotiations with the Chinese are then discussed, along with potential future research directions.     

A Matchmaking Component for the Discovery of Agreement and Negotiation Spaces in Electronic Markets

This paper presents the design of an extended matchmaking component for electronic markets, which is able to identify negotiable agreements and the issues that are subject to the negotiation, in the case where basic matchmaking fails to find agreements that satisfy the constraints of the seller and the buyer. The foundation for this functionality is the introduction of negotiable constraints within the offer specification process. The extended matchmaking component complements our SilkRoad design and implementation framework for electronic negotiations. This framework also features other negotiation service components such as a mediation service, which may use the feedback from the extended matchmaking operation on agreement candidates and negotiation spaces, to suggest fair agreements on the basis of the Adjusted Winner algorithm for dispute resolution.     

Negotiation via the World Wide Web: A Cross-cultural Study of Decision Making

INSPIRE is a Web-based system for the support and conduct of negotiations. The primary uses of the system are training and research. Between July 1996 and April 1997, 281 bilateral negotiations were conducted through the system by managers, engineers and students from over 50 countries. INSPIRE has been used at eight universities and training centers. In research it is being used to study cross-cultural differences in decision making and the use of computer support in negotiation. This paper outlines the system, the negotiation methodology embedded in it, and reports the initial results of the experimental study of the impact of culture on Web-based bilateral negotiation.     

Evaluations of Tactics for Automated Negotiations

Automated negotiation under the infrastructure of e-commerce is becoming an important issue. However, although the communication protocols and frameworks of automated negotiation have been extensively investigated, the corresponding tactics and strategies are still underdeveloped and need to be evaluated further. Based on the negotiation model proposed by Faratin et al., this paper examines the performance of automated negotiation tactics and intends to provide concise suggestions for the users of automated negotiation. First, theoretical analysis is used to evaluate the behavior-dependent tactics. Constructive conclusions are obtained when single-issue negotiations are considered. Next, a new framework for applying single-issue tactics to multi-issue negotiation is proposed. Based on this framework, theoretical analysis is then extended to multi-issue cases. Finally, different from the previous work, exhaustive simulations based on two-issue negotiations are performed to evaluate the effectiveness of behavior-dependent and time-dependent tactics. The experimental results provide several important insights into negotiation tactics.     

Strategies and language trends in learning success and failure of negotiation

In negotiation by electronic means, language is an important deal-making tool which helps realize negotiation strategies. Negotiators may use language to request information, exchange offers, persuade, threaten, as well as reach a compromise or find prospective partners. All this is recorded in texts exchanged by negotiators. We explore the language signals of strategies—argumentation, persuasion, negation, proposition. Leech and Svartvik’s approach to language in communication gives our study the necessary systematic background. It combines pragmatics, the communicative grammar and the meaning of English verbs. Language signals become features in the task of classifying those texts. We employ Statistical Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning techniques to find general trends that negotiation texts exhibit. Our hypothesis is that language signals help predict negotiation outcomes. We run experiments on the Inspire data. The electronic negotiation support system Inspire was gathering data for several years. The data include text messages which negotiators may exchange while trading offers. We conduct a series of Machine Learning experiments to predict the negotiation outcome from the texts associated with first halves of negotiations. We compare the results with the classification of complete negotiations. We conclude the paper with an analysis of the results and a list of suggestions for future work.     

Towards a Structured Design of Electronic Negotiations

Global communication networks and advances in information technology enable the design of information systems facilitating effective formulation and efficient resolution of negotiation problems. Increasingly, these systems guide negotiators in clarifying the relevant issues, provide media for offer formulation and exchange, and help in achieving an agreement. In practice, the task of analysing, modelling, designing and implementing electronic negotiation media demands a systematic, traceable and reproducible approach. An engineering approach to media specification and construction has these characteristics. In this paper, we provide a rationale for the engineering approach that allows pragmatic adoption of economic and social sciences perspectives on negotiated decisions for the purpose of supporting and undertaking electronic negotiations. Similarities and differences of different theories that underlie on-going studies of electronic negotiations are identified. This provides a basis for integration of different theories and approaches for the specific purpose of the design of effective electronic negotiations. Drawing on diverse streams of literature in different fields such as economics, management, computer, and behavioural sciences, we present an example of an integration of three significant streams of theoretical and applied research involving negotiations, traditional auctions and on-line auctions.     

B2B Negotiation Support: The Need for a Communication Perspective

Negotiation support is an important challenge for business-to-business e-commerce that is still poorly supported in current information systems. One reason is that negotiation processes are much harder to formalize than the business processes in the fulfilment phase. The goal of this paper is to provide the basis for a formal analysis of different types of electronic negotiations which can help developers of future negotiation support systems. The analysis is performed from a communication perspective, in particular, Habermas' theory of communicative action. Using this perspective, a distinction can be made between norm-oriented, goal-oriented and document-based negotiation. Whereas traditional modeling methods take a data-oriented view, the theory of communicative action supports a communication-oriented view that provides more insight in the logic of negotiation processes. The analysis forms the basis for the negotiation support prototype implemented within the ESPRIT project MeMo (Mediating and Monitoring Electronic Commerce) which was aimed at B2B e-commerce for SMEs in Europe.     

The Interplay of Communication and Decisions in Electronic Negotiations: Communicative Decisions or Decisive Communication?

Whilst much research has been conducted on decision support for electronic negotiations and some research has been done on communication support in this area, there is a lack of research on the interplay between these two elements of negotiations. The questions whether both are equally important, whether one effects the other, or whether they show counter-effects are important both for negotiation training (i.e. what should be the focus for becoming a good negotiator) and for system research (i.e. which system support elements need to be developed). The current paper presents results of a controlled laboratory experiment with negotiators that were provided with decision support and communication support and negotiators that had only communication support available. The impact of decision support on the communication process and on outcome dimensions as well as the impact of communication behaviour on the negotiation process and the qualitative dimensions of the outcome will be discussed.     

Data-Driven Phase Analysis of E-negotiations: An Exemplary Study of Synchronous and Asynchronous Negotiations

In this empirical study, we present a new method for analyzing coded and categorized data of negotiation protocols. By applying a data-driven identification of negotiation phases we are able to identify endogenous dynamics of negotiation processes and to combine advantages of both, episodic and stage models of phase analysis. We present an exemplary study in which we compare processes of synchronous and asynchronous electronic negotiations. This analysis shows that, while synchronous negotiations follow a phase model similar to sequential stage models as discussed for face-to-face negotiations, asynchronous negotiations show less evidence of such a structure.     

The antecedents of renegotiations in practice—an exploratory analysis

In order to support business negotiations with electronic tools effectively, a deep understanding of real-life business negotiations is required. Comparing the settings usually applied in negotiation experiments with the every-day experiences of business negotiators, it can be stated that the work of business negotiators is much more iterative and embedded. Renegotiations appear on a regular basis. This observation stresses the importance of flawless communication in business negotiations and raises questions regarding the reasons for renegotiations and the role of information technology in this context. This paper investigates data gathered in a 2005 survey study in order to identify the context factors that drive B2B renegotiations using a preliminary regression model. The rules of interaction, task complexity, and business relationship are found to be significant predictors of the renegotiation likelihood while media richness does not impact the likelihood of renegotiations in practice.     

How Much Do We Say? Using Informativeness of Negotiation Text Records for Early Prediction of Negotiation Outcomes

Business negotiations represent a form of communication where informativeness, i.e., the amount of provided information, depends on context and situation. In this study, we hypothesize that relations exist between language signals of informativeness and the success or failure of negotiations. We support our hypothesis through linguistic and statistical analysis which acquires language patterns from records of electronic text-based negotiations. Empirical results of machine learning experiments show that the acquired patterns are useful for early prediction of negotiation outcomes.     

E-Alliance: A Negotiation Infrastructure for Virtual Alliances

In this paper we provide an overview of E-Alliance, a software infrastructure we are developing to support negotiation activities in concurrent inter-organisational alliances. Our baseline is to offer a collaboration framework which fully preserves the autonomy of organisations grouped in an alliance, while enabling concurrency of their activities, flexibility of their negotiations and dynamic evolution of their environment. We propose to support negotiation between the partners within such alliances by combining different technologies, such as software engineering techniques, middleware-level coordination facilities and multiagent systems support. We present our approach in the context of a sample scenario of an alliance where partners are printshops capable of (out/in) sourcing print jobs among them to better accomplish their customers' requests.     

The Effects of Personalised Negotiation Training on Learning and Performance in Electronic Negotiations

Individuals have different learning styles and thus require different methods for knowledge acquisition. Whereas learning theories have long acknowledged this fact, personalised negotiation trainings especially for electronic negotiations have rarely been developed. This paper integrates learning styles and negotiation styles and reports on an implementation of this integration. We will discuss personalised negotiation trainings, namely an enactive training and a vicarious training, that we developed to match the learners’ learning styles. Such a matching is proposed to be beneficial regarding learning outcomes. Furthermore, positive effects on the dyadic negotiation outcomes are assumed. To this end, an experiment with participants from different European countries was conducted. The results show tendencies that personalised negotiation trainings lead to better skill acquisition during the training and also to fairer negotiation outcomes. Overall, this paper contributes an integration of the theories on individual differences from the domains of negotiation and learning as well as valuable insights for further experiments on individual differences in negotiations.     

The Montreal Taxonomy for Electronic Negotiations

Research in the domain of electronic negotiations is a rather new and very interdisciplinary field, which gains more and more attention due to the industry hype and momentum regarding electronic commerce and electronic markets. Negotiations in a narrow sense (not taking into account simple forms such as hit and take) have been identified as an advantageous coordination mechanism for the interaction of buyers and sellers in electronic markets that transcend the selling of commodities or uniform goods. Hence, support for negotiations may become a critical success factor for electronic markets, especially regarding the recent failures of many industrial ventures. This paper presents the Montreal Taxonomy, which allows not only for the exact characterisation and comparison of a broad variety of electronic negotiation designs and systems, ranging from auctions to bilateral bargaining tables, but could also lead towards a more structured approach for the design of electronic negotiations.     

全球服务贸易自由化态势研判——以多哈回合服务贸易谈判为视角

服务贸易是多哈回合谈判的一个重要领域。由于多哈回合进展极不顺利,新一轮服务贸易谈判进程也十分曲折。从总体上看,这轮谈判已取得了一定的阶段性成果,同时在许多方面也存在着明显的缺失。从多哈回合服务贸易谈判存在的问题、发展的进程及趋向来看,今后一个时期全球服务贸易自由化的基本态势为:领域更趋广泛,任务更为艰巨,成果仍将有限,影响更加深远。