The Science and Engineering of E-negotiation: Review of the Emerging Field

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. Following the review of decision and negotiation analysis, and negotiation support and negotiation systems, methodological foundations are discussed. Based on review of methodological foundations and the scientific and engineering perspectives on negotiations, an enegotiation view integration model is proposed. This model integrates behavioural, scientific and engineering views on e-negotiation support and the media reference model.