INSPIRE is a Web-based system for the support and conduct of negotiation. The primary uses of the system are training and research. Between July 1996 and April 1997, 281 bilateral negotiations were conducted through the system by managers, engineers and students from over 50 countries. INSPIRE has been used at eight universities and training centers. In research it is being used to study cross-cultural differences in decision making and the use of computer support in negotiation. This paper outlines the system, the negotiation methodology embedded in it, and reports the initial results of the experimental study of the impact of culture on Web-based bilateral negotiation. Keywords: negotiation, international negotiation, cross-cultural study, Internet, World Wide Web, decision support, negotiation support, preferences. Acknowledgments The authors gratefully acknowledge the contribution of each member of the InterNeg team and, in particular, they want to thank John Bowen, Ying-Hueih C...

limited review. Views or opinions expressed herein do not necessarily represent those of the Institute, its National Member Organizations, or other organizations supporting the work. Contents

Negotiation can be regarded as playing a game with certain rules. If the rules change, the game has to be played differently. Compared to traditional markets, electronic markets can have fundamentally different characteristics such as cost structure or the level of transparency. These differences have already stimulated the tremendous success of one breed of electronic market negotiations: auctions. But auctions offer only limited support for the negotiations that will be necessary in more differentiated markets for complex goods and services. This paper relates the implications of specific electronic market characteristics to the effectiveness of major types of negotiations. The analysis reveals why bidding protocols currently dominate bargaining protocols and suggests that future negotiation support beyond auctions should be based on integrative multilateral protocols. 1.

New information technologies invariably provide excellent opportunities for improving the efficiency and effectiveness of decision making and negotiation, through the development of novel decision support techniques. Emerging Internet related technologies and, in particular, the World Wide Web provide yet another opportunity for radical change and improvement in the support and practice of negotiations. This view is supported by the results of a cross-cultural experiment that we have been conducting over the past year as part of the InterNeg project, observing computerassisted international negotiations over the Web. One of the surprises from this experiment is the degree of acceptance that the Web/computer technology achieved among a user base comprising both experienced negotiators and students. In this paper we report our experimental results and suggest the reasons behind and requirements for successful acceptance of Web based negotiation support technology, with the aim of stimulating further exploration of the opportunities held out by these new technologies.

System, which we are building to enable the exchange or sharing of private (sensitive) multimodal digital data that reside in distributed digital repositories. These data may include raw data, derived data, tools, methods or services. SCENS contains three interconnected layers, each layer implementing distinct functions. The paper focuses on the upper two layers, Layer one and Layer two. Layer one is a traditional web-based negotiation interface for human beings to interact with the system in order to register their data and their conditions. Conditions of negotiation can vary widely and Layer one enables the user to state these conditions. Layer two is an interface for the interaction between or among negotiation agents through web services. We show how these agents cooperate with each other to provide the service for different types of negotiating parties. 1

limited review. Views or opinions expressed herein do not necessarily represent those of the Institute, its National Member Organizations, or other organizations supporting the work. Contents

Access to, and the ability to use computer and communication technologies varies widely between countries. It is often lack of proficiency rather than access that creates the barriers between developed and developing countries. The InterNeg Web site and its online systems INSPIRE and INSS, aim at overcoming these barriers by educating people around the world about decision and negotiation analysis and providing them with an opportunity to use decision support techniques. The systems allow one to conduct simulated negotiations with people from different cultures and solve realistic managerial decision problems. In this paper we present and discuss the limitations of the prevailing methods for teaching decision making and negotiation and present a technological solution that is Internet-based. We present our experiences with using our Web-based decision and negotiation support systems in executive training programs at the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB), India and discuss...

In this paper we describe an approach for multicriteria modeling and support of multi-stakeholder decision processes. We report on its testing in the development of a new water level management policy for a regulated lake-river system in Finland. In the framework the stakeholders are involved in the decision process from the problem structuring stage to the group consensus seeking stage. This aims at creating an evolutionary learning process. In this paper we focus on the use of a new interactive method for finding and identifying Pareto-optimal alternatives. Role playing experiments are used to test the practical applicability of this method of improving directions, a negotiation support procedure by Ehtamo, Kettunen and Hmlinen [6]. We also describe the preference programming approach for the aggregation of the stakeholder opinions in the final evaluation of alternatives and consensus seeking.

New information technologies invariably provide excellent opportunities for improving the efficiency and effectiveness of decision making and negotiation through the development of novel decision support techniques. Emerging Internet related technologies and, in particular, the World Wide Web provide yet another opportunity for radical change and improvement in the support and practice of negotiations. This view is supported by the results of a cross-cultural experiment that we have been conducting over the past year as part of the InterNeg project, observing computerassisted international negotiations over the Web. One of the surprises from this experiment is the degree of acceptance that the Web/computer technology achieved among a user base comprising both experienced negotiators and students. In this paper we report our experimental results and suggest the reasons behind and requirements for successful acceptance of Web based negotiation support technology, with the aim of stimulat...

This paper introduces SCENS, a Secure Content Exchange Negotiation System suitable for the exchange of private digital data that reside in distributed digital repositories. SCENS is an open negotiation system with flexibility, security and scalability. SCENS is currently being designed to support data sharing in scientific research, by providing incentives and goals specific to a research community. However, it can easily be extended to apply to other communities, such as government, commercial and other types of exchanges. It is a trusted third party software infrastructure enabling independent entities to interact and conduct multiple forms of negotiation.