SOLACE: A framework for electronic negotiations

Copyright @ 2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbHMost existing frameworks for electronic negotiations today are tied to specific negotiation systems for which they were developed, preventing them from being applied to other negotiation scenarios. Thus, the evaluation of electronic negotiation systems is difficult as each one is based on a different framework. Additionally, each developer has to design a new framework for any system to be developed, leading to a ‘reinvention of the wheel’. This paper presents SOLACE—a generic framework for multi-issue negotiations, which can be applied to a variety of negotiation scenarios. In contrast with other frameworks for electronic negotiations, SOLACE supports hybrid systems in which the negotiation participants can be humans, agents or a combination of the two. By recognizing the importance of strategies in negotiations and incorporating a time attribute in negotiation proposals, SOLACE enhances existing approaches and provides a foundation for the flexible electronic negotiation systems of the future

A multi-agent simulation framework for automated negotiation in order promising

The purpose of this paper is to propose and test a multi-agent-based system for automated multi-attribute negotiation in order promising. In a make-to-order production model, it is not always possible to satisfy the Available-to-Promise (ATP) and Capable-to-Promise (CTP) conditions. Therefore, it is important to quickly explore alternate solutions that would satisfy both the customer and the supplier. We adopt the concepts of evolutionary system design that advocates for continuous exploration of new solutions based on extensive search and multi-attribute simulations that help identify for better negotiated solutions based on real-life ordering situations – changes of delivery date, price adjustments, addition/modifications of valueadded services as part of the order. Results of our simulations showed that negotiation procedures did reduce the number of rejected orders and increase the overall revenue when negotiation concepts are introduced

The Influence of Culture on ABMP Negotiation Parameters

Negotiations are known to proceed differently across cultures. A realistic agent model of international negotiations has to take cultural differences into account. This paper presents an agent-based model that tackles this challenge. The context is a trade game where commodities with a hidden quality attribute are exchanged. The negotiation model uses the ABMP negotiation architecture. It applies a utility function that includes market value, quality preference, and risk attitude. The indices of the five dimensions of Hofstede’s model of national cultures are used, in combination with agent’s group membership and societal status, to differentiate negotiation behavior by adaptation of weight factors in the utility function and ABMP parameters. The paper presents test runs with synthetic cultures and a set of actual national cultures. The present version of the model helps to understand behaviors in international trade networks. It proves that Hofstede’s dimensions can be used to generate culturally differentiated agent

Negotiation processes within inter-organizational alliances

This paper describesthe negotiation component of E-Alliance, a software infrastructure defined for supporting negotiation activities in concurrent inter-organizational alliances. The E-Alliance’s main intent is to preserve the autonomy of organizations grouped in an alliance. The purpose of this work is to offer support for small and medium enterprises which cannot or do not want to fulfill a big contract alone. This approach is illustrated by a sample scenario where partners are printshops grouped into an alliance to better accomplish customers’ demands.negotiation, middleware, virtual enterprises, multi-agent systems, interaction protocol

Addressing stability issues in mediated complex contract negotiations for constraint-based, non-monotonic utility spaces

Negotiating contracts with multiple interdependent issues may yield non- monotonic, highly uncorrelated preference spaces for the participating agents. These scenarios are specially challenging because the complexity of the agents’ utility functions makes traditional negotiation mechanisms not applicable. There is a number of recent research lines addressing complex negotiations in uncorrelated utility spaces. However, most of them focus on overcoming the problems imposed by the complexity of the scenario, without analyzing the potential consequences of the strategic behavior of the negotiating agents in the models they propose. Analyzing the dynamics of the negotiation process when agents with different strategies interact is necessary to apply these models to real, competitive environments. Specially problematic are high price of anarchy situations, which imply that individual rationality drives the agents towards strategies which yield low individual and social welfares. In scenarios involving highly uncorrelated utility spaces, “low social welfare” usually means that the negotiations fail, and therefore high price of anarchy situations should be avoided in the negotiation mechanisms. In our previous work, we proposed an auction-based negotiation model designed for negotiations about complex contracts when highly uncorrelated, constraint-based utility spaces are involved. This paper performs a strategy analysis of this model, revealing that the approach raises stability concerns, leading to situations with a high (or even infinite) price of anarchy. In addition, a set of techniques to solve this problem are proposed, and an experimental evaluation is performed to validate the adequacy of the proposed approaches to improve the strategic stability of the negotiation process. Finally, incentive-compatibility of the model is studied.Spain. Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia (grant TIN2008-06739-C04-04

An adaptive ontology-mediated approach to organize agent-based supply chain negotiation

Conference Theme: Soft Computing Techniques for Advanced Manufacturing and Service SystemsSession - MP-Fc Supply Chain Management & Logistics 3: cie181hk-1Effective supply chain management (SCM) comprises activities involving the demand and supply of resources and services. One important aspect of SCM is that companies in the supply chain may have to make decisions which are conflicting with the other partners. Negotiation is an essential approach to solve transaction and scheduling problems among supply chain members. Multi-agent systems (MAS) are being increasingly used in SCM applications. The advances in agent technology have provided the potential of automating supply chain negotiations to alleviate human interactions. This paper proposes an ontology-mediated approach to organize the agent-based supply chain negotiation and equip the agents with sophisticated negotiation knowledge. Firstly, a generic agent negotiation scheme is developed involving the agent intelligence modules, the knowledge representation method and the interaction behaviors. Then, the negotiation knowledge is structured through the usage of ontology, which performs as a hierarchical architecture as well as a descriptive language. The relationships between negotiation ontology concepts are defined through SWRL inference rules. Through this method, agents' negotiation behaviors will be more adaptive to various negotiation environments in accordance with different negotiation knowledge.published_or_final_versionThe 40th International Conference on Computers & Industrial Engineering (CIE40), Awaji City, Japan, 25-28 July 2010. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Computers and Industrial Engineering, 2010, p. 1-