The Internet is quickly changing the way business-to-consumer and business-to-business commerce is conducted in the world. The Electronic Revolution has also spawned a trend of price wars and, in some instances, chaos, because of the zero-sum nature of the electronic channel. The technology has created an opportunity to get beyond the lose--lose nature of single issue price wars by determining sellers' and buyers' preferences across multiple issues and encouraging negotiations, thereby creating possible joint gains for all parties. We develop simple multiple-issue algorithms and heuristics that could be used in electronic auctions and electronic markets, to match businesses to businesses and consumers based on dovetailing underlying interests and preferences. We provide arguments that such dovetailed matches should help stabilize markets and make them more efficient. q 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Auctions; Electronic markets; Decision support; Negotiation modeling; World wide web; Intelligent agents 1.

Internet technologies are increasingly used in various forms of communication, including negotiations. This paper explores the cultural implications in anonymous inter- and intra-cultural electronic negotiations. The negotiations were conducted via Inspire, a Web-based negotiation support system, and involved 166 subjects from

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.

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Many of the existing e-negotiation support systems are build around one negotiation protocol. This effectively restricts their use to those problems and interactions that had been assumed a priori by the systems ’ designers. Field and experimental studies show that the way the negotiation process is structured depends on the negotiators ’ characteristics, the problem and the context in which an agreement is sought. It also has been recognized in literature that the way a problem is represented and the solution process implemented both strongly influence the results at which individual decisionmakers and negotiators arrive. This article presents elements of a theory for the design of negotiation protocols. The proposed protocol formalism allows for the construction of models from which users can select a protocol instance that suits them and/or is appropriate for the problem at-hand. Furthermore, this formalism allows for the construction of protocols that can be modified during the user-system interactions. The paper also presents two key requirements for negotiation protocols embedded in support systems, namely their satisfiability and completeness.

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Abstract-Software is viewed as an artifact which interacts with cultures of societies in which it functions. Software manufacturers make efforts to adapt the appearance of their products to aesthetic and historical values of the markets in which they are sold (“software for cultures”). It is well known that software embeds behavioral and organizational principles that are culture-determined (“cultures in software”). Internet and e-commerce bring these phenomena into the fore of the debate on societal implications of Information Technology. The paper argues for a research agenda on the multifaceted interactions between software and culture. I.

Experimental research on cross-cultural negotiations typically involves subjects negotiating in a classroom or laboratory setting. Such negotiations are brief, with a strictly imposed deadline and face-to-face. Further, the negotiations typically involve dyads from the same country. The comparisons are done on the basis of experiments replicated in several countries. Internet technologies allow for communication across the cultural frontiers. While the communication is not as rich as in the case of face-toface discussions, it allows subjects to negotiate in an asynchronous mode and at their own pace. It is also possible to conduct anonymous negotiations for several weeks. This paper explores the implications of culture on anonymous negotiations conducted via the Web with the use of INSPIRE, a Web-based negotiation support system. The negotiations involved 166 subjects from Austria, Ecuador, Finland, and Switzerland. A model to study cross-cultural negotiations is proposed and assessed ...

Significant efforts are made to design and implement decision and negotiation support systems to identify efficient alternatives. The underlying assumption is that decisionmakers prefer an efficient alternative over an inefficient one. Experimental studies indicate that people often accept inefficient compromises and are unwilling to improve them even if prompted to do so. This report presents preliminary results for the analysis of 605 bilateral negotiations in which only 20.8% of negotiators who achieved an inefficient compromise entered the post-settlement phase in an attempt to improve the compromise. iv About the Authors David Cray is a Professor at the School of Business, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. Gregory Kersten was a Senior Research Scholar with the Decision Analysis and Support Project from July 1997-June 1998. He is now a Professor at the Department of Decision Sciences and MIS at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada. 1 Negotiating Inefficient Compromises: ...

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...