INSS - A New Approach in Designing Web-based Negotiation Support Systems

Negotiation is vital in establishing business relationships between organizations and individuals. It is a complex, costly, time intensive and iterative process which involves heavy exchange and processing of information. E-negotiation uses information and communication technologies to automate exchange and processing. With the rapid development of online business interactions, the need for such systems has increased. Consequently, research initiatives are being focused towards designing and implementing these systems and deploying them on the Internet. INSS is a web-based e-negotiation system that allows business partners to negotiate over open and dynamically modifiable problems using different strategies and tactics. The system is based on an existing negotiation platform called Inspire although new design concepts were introduced and several features were added. This paper discusses the design and architecture of INSS and comments on a survey that was conducted to assess its usability. The novelty of our approach resides in the construction of a negotiation protocol allowing negotiators to formulate their own negotiation case and to specify the process as well as the permissible activities of the participants, and the introduction of the concepts of problem specification and issue modification in the design of the system ♦ This work has been partially supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, Canada and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Canada.