The Science and Engineering of E-Negotiation: An Introduction

The decision-making aspect of the negotiation process requires that participants collect and process information to determine alternatives, and to formulate offers and arguments. The communication aspect of negotiations involves exchange of offers, arguments and counterarguments. Collecting and processing new information involves learning, leading to modifications and adjustment of the decision problem, and the communication. An increasing number of negotiations are conducted via electronic media allowing for an extensive use of software in negotiators’ activities. Traditionally, negotiation support was based on normative and prescriptive research; its users were analysts and experts. The purpose of the recently developed e-negotiation systems is to provide negotiators with services and to satisfy their requirements rather than direct their activities so that they conform to rationality and optimality principles. This orientation is typical to software engineering. Due to the difficulties in reconciling results of prescriptive and descriptive studies the e-negotiation design specifications are often based on selected descriptive approaches at the expense of the prescriptive support. This paper presents selected results from negotiation and e-negotiation research and provides specifications for e-negotiation system design and development. Based on review of methodological foundations and a media reference model an e-negotiation view integration model that integrates behavioural, scientific and engineering views on e-negotiation support and media reference mode is proposed. Internet technologies allowed deployment of decision and negotiation support systems (DSS and NSS) on the Web. E-marketplaces and virtual organizations, and the increasing collaboration among people and organizations using Internet have already led to the design and development of new e-negotiation systems [2]. Many of these systems were designed to meet users’ requirements and solve their practical problems. This is the focus of the engineering approach [3]. Economic and social sciences recognized that people are often biased and make routine mistakes and misrepresentations. This imposes an important requirement on the e-negotiation systems; designers need to consider both qualitative and soft, and quantitative and hard aspects of the negotiation process. This paper briefly reviews results in negotiation research from the perspective of the design and development of e-negotiation tools and systems, and proposes e-negotiation view integration (ENVI) model. The purpose of ENVI is to provide a basis for the integration of perspectives, approaches and models from economic and social sciences, computer sciences and information systems, and management to design e-negotiation processes and systems.