Human-Agent Negotiations: The Impact Agents’ Concession Schedule and Task Complexity on Agreements

Employment of software agents for conducting negotiations with online customers promises to increase the flexibility and reach of the exchange mechanism and reduce transaction costs. Past research had suggested different negotiation tactics for the agents, and had used them in experimental settings against human negotiators. This work explores the interaction between negotiation strategies and the complexity of the negotiation task as represented by the number of negotiation issues. Including more issues in a negotiation potentially allows the parties more space to maneuver and, thus, promises higher likelihood of agreement. In practice, the consideration of more issues requires higher cognitive effort, which could have a negative effect on reaching an agreement. The results of human–agent negotiation experiments conducted at a major Canadian university revealed that there is an interaction between chosen strategy and task complexity. Also, when competitive strategy was employed, the agents\u27 utility was the highest. Because competitive strategy resulted in fewer agreements the average utility per agent was the highest in the compromising–competitive strategy

Negotiating Stances Used with Minority Suppliers: A Research Note

While new ways of organizing exchange have become prominent in business-to-business markets, the function of corporate minority supplier purchasing programs in this changing organizational environment has received scant attention. Specifically, the extent to which the present structure of minority supplier purchasing programs enhances -- or deters -- the creation of strategic partnerships, impacts the way buyers and suppliers interact, and ultimately determines the efficacy of these exchange relationships has not been sufficiently addressed in the literature. The present study examines the relationship between the minority supplier categorization (versus those not classified as such) and the negotiation stances that purchasing agents undertake with these suppliers. Data were collected using a mail survey of university purchasing agents. The purchasing agents were asked to select a supplier which is a participant in his or her organization’s minority supplier purchasing program and answer questions about a recent negotiation with that supplier. For purposes of comparison, a random sample of purchasing agents was asked to respond with regard to negotiations with a supplier which was not a participant in any of the organization’s supplier purchasing programs. Cluster analysis was used to examine the negotiation stances used by the purchasing agents

Intervening Effects of the Personality Dimension Agreeableness on Negotiation Strategy Selection in Budget Negotiations

This paper presents results of an experiment testing how the personality dimension agreeableness interacts with different organizational factors to affect the strategy chosen when entering a budget negotiation. Prior budget research suggests firms invite subordinates into budget negotiations primarily to elicit private information from subordinate managers. However, criticism of traditional budgeting processes suggests subordinates will act strategically in such negotiations, limiting the effectiveness of inviting managers into budget negotiations. This study hypothesizes the factors most criticized, including budget targets in performance evaluation, will interact with certain organizational factors, connectedness of organizational units, and an individual personality dimension to significantly affect the amount of information managers share through the choice of negotiation strategy. Results indicate such interaction may impact how and to what extent information is shared in the budget negotiation, suggesting important implications for how budget managers approach budget negotiations

Negotiation framework in Cascais real estate market

Negotiation is such a broad field of knowledge with applications in different areas and sectors of activity. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the negotiation framework in Cascais real estate market. This thesis considers the perspective of real estate professionals’ knowledge and behaviors attending negotiation concepts and approaches. The outcomes of a qualitative methodology result from twelve semi-structured interviews with twelve real estate professionals – General Director, Commercial Directors, Human Resources Director, Partner and Manager, Real Estate Agents, Senior Sales Consultant and Private Broker – of twelve different real estate companies from Cascais. There is a positive correlation with negotiation theory and reality. Real estate professionals are well aware of the main topics that are the basis of negotiation subject. Similarities and contrasts were found when compared information and studies presented in the literature review with the data analysis collected from the interviews. This thesis establishes some conclusions that contribute to the existing literature on negotiation framework in real estate market. It exposes how real estate professionals relate with negotiation theory and its involvement in their business, as well as their knowledge regarding negotiation theory.Negociação é um extensor campo de conhecimento com aplicações em diferentes áreas e sectores de atividade. O propósito desta tese é investigar o enquadramento da negociação no mercado imobiliário em Cascais. Esta tese reflete sobre a perspetiva do conhecimento e comportamentos de profissionais do mercado imobiliário tendo em conta conceitos e abordagens de negociação. Os resultados da metodologia qualitativa advêm de doze entrevistas semi-estruturadas a doze profissionais do ramo imobiliário – Diretor Geral, Diretores Comercias, Diretor de Recursos Humanos, Sócio-Gerente, Agentes Imobiliários, Consultor Sénior de Vendas e Corretor Privado – de doze imobiliárias diferentes de Cascais. Existe uma correlação positiva ente a teoria e a realidade. Os profissionais do ramo imobiliário estão conscientes dos principais tópicos que são a base da área de negociação. Semelhanças e contrastes foram encontrados quando a informação e estudos apresentados na revisão de literatura foram comparados com a análise dos dados recolhidos através das entrevistas. Esta tese estabelece algumas conclusões que contribuem para a literatura existente sobre o enquadramento da negociação no mercado imobiliário. Expõe como é que os profissionais imobiliários se relacionam com a teoria da negociação e o conhecimento que têm da mesma, assim como o seu envolvimento nos negócios

A baseline for non-linear bilateral negotiations: the full results of the agents competing in ANAC 2014

In the past few years, there is a growing interest in automated negotiation in which software agents facilitate negotiation on behalf of their users and try to reach joint agreements. The potential value of developing such mechanisms becomes enormous when negotiation domain is too complex for humans to find agreements (e.g. e-commerce) and when software components need to reach agreements to work together (e.g. web-service composition). Here, one of the major challenges is to design agents that are able to deal with incomplete information about their opponents in negotiation as well as to effectively negotiate on their users’ behalves. To facilitate the research in this field, an automated negotiating agent competition has been organized yearly. This paper introduces the research challenges in Automated Negotiating Agent Competition (ANAC) 2014 and explains the competition set up and results. Furthermore, a detailed analysis of the best performing five agents has been examined

The Strategic Real Estate Framework: Processes, Linkages, Decisions

The intention of this work is to provide a contemporary perspective for understanding the real estate markets that can guide the involvement and decisions for all sectors of society's direct and indirect involvements with the real estate process, resources and market participants. Comprehension of the multifaceted, multidimensional, substantial segment of the economy known as real estate is best accomplished through a strategic framework. Because the real estate discipline lacks coherence and concurrence about what is the essence of real estate and what are the operative paradigms for comprehending and making order of the discipline, there is need for a strategic framework that is simultaneously synthesizing, integrating and comprehensive. The concept of the real estate strategy framework both provides the basis for gaining insights into the real estate discipline and also presents a means to connect a strategic approach to real estate with the act of real estate decision-making. By understanding the real estate process, those strategic influences on transactions that follow from the real estate process can be identified. This framework can enhance the quality, reliability and prudence of real estate decisions. By understanding these interdependencies and linkages, more effective decisionmaking concerning real estate interests and the objectives of participants in the real estate markets can be achieved.

Teachers' beliefs on conflict and conflict resolution

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

On Coalition Formation with Heterogeneous Agents

We propose a framework to analyze coalition formation with heterogeneous agents. Existing literature defines stability conditions that do not ensure that, once an agent decides to sign an agreement, the enlarged coalition is feasible. Defining the concepts of refraction and exchanging, we set up conditions of existence and enlargement of a coalition with heterogeneous agents. We use the concept of exchanging agents to give necessary conditions for internal stability and show that refraction is a sufficient condition for the failure of an enlargement of the coalition. With heterogeneous agents we can get a situation where a group of members of an unstable coalition does not deviate, neither within the coalition nor within the extended coalition. Hence, the possibilities of agreement are richer than in the standard analysis with homogeneous agents. Examples of industrial economics are used for illustration, and an application to climate change negotiations is discussed in more detail.Heterogeneity, Coalition, Exchanging, Refraction, Global Externalities

Collaboration through shared understanding in the early design stage

The complexity of the collaborative design process is related to the nature of the product and the processes, and also involves the social interplay that ultimately generates design. This fundamentally, affects the way people work, in the purposeful action of designing together. Low levels of collaboration are identified especially at early design stages, where the collective design creation is hindered by the lack of ability of the team to build shared understanding, embracing a multitude of expertise in the task. In this context, the research focused on how the concept of shared understanding can potentially support better collaboration at early design stages. This is based on a deeper understanding of collaborative design as a dynamic system of social interplay, in which the process to build shared understanding for concerted actions can be described as a system that combines mediated coupling and coordinated perception, in a context where division of labour exist. Based on a literature review, lean approaches that claim to support shared understanding between project participants are investigated. This paper contributes in discussing how shared understanding, as a process, can be the basis of the collaborative act, and how components of this process can be addressed through lean approaches

Consolidation, delimitation and stalemate: disruptive interplay and strategic incentives in the CBD-TRIPS relationship

"The relationship between the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the WTO Agreement on Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) is characterized by a persistent potential for disruptions in implementation, such as 'biopiracy' conflicts, because of the agreements' incompatible provisions on property rights over genetic resources. The lack of consolidation is often explained by attempts to strategically exploit interplay between the two institutions. Countries of the North and the South are said to push for provisions under their preferred agreement in order to circumvent obligations under the other. We develop an alternative explanation based on a conception of international negotiators acting as agents of particular interest groups rather than as representatives of the state as a whole. Using a Two-level Games model of independent negotiations for agreements on functionally interdependent issues, we analyze the incentives for negotiators to delay or prevent consolidation for strategic reasons. The analysis shows that, under certain conditions, persistent disruption may be due to a strategic dilemma that prevents negotiators from taking initiatives for consolidation." (author's abstract