Business negotiation support systems (NSS) are slowly entering the market, although they lack a clear theoretical basis as of yet. Negotiation is a complicated process with many aspects that have only partially been described with the formal rigidity needed to build support systems. Most theories about negotiation are descriptive and not prescriptive, which, among other things, prevents their use as a basis for negotiation support systems. Complicating matters is that a negotiation process consists of several distinct stages, each with its own characteristics. Furthermore, there are many types of negotiations, depending on the domain. This suggests that we should not strive for one general negotiation support system, but for a set of domain-specific tools. To ground the development and application of these tools in different scenarios of use, we propose an integrated theoretical framework. After giving an overview of existing negotiation support approaches, we construct a business negotiation support metamodel for NSS analysis. The metamodel is illustrated through analyzing the case of the MeMo project, which concerns contract negotiations in small and medium enterprises in the European construction industry. The MeMo system is one of the first business NSS with an explicit international orientation.

Negotiation is a complex emotional decision-making process aiming to reach an agreement to exchange goods or services. Although a daily activity, few people are effective negotiators. Existing support systems make a significant improvement if the negotiation space is well-understood, because computers can better cope with the computational complexity. However, the negotiation space can only be properly developed if the human parties jointly explore their interests. The inherent semantic problem and the emotional issues involved make that negotiation cannot be handled by artificial intelligence alone, and a human-machine collaborative system is required. This interest paper presents research goals, ideas, challenges and an approach towards creating the next generation of negotiation support systems.

Agenda 21, the Brudtland Report and other seminal documents discussed earlier in

Abstract — Negotiation is a daily occurring process at all levels of society. Emotion plays an important role in negotiation between humans. In this paper we discuss to what extent and in which form ICT techniques can be used to get a grip on the emotional processes that play a role during negotiations. We focus on emotion recognition and measurement. Our analysis shows that current emotion recognition & measurement technology is mainly usable in the preparation for negotiations (including training sessions) and during offline moments of the negotiation (e.g., time-outs). The main arguments for this conclusion are: (1) valid and reliable emotion recognition and measurement techniques are usually invasive, and, (2) it is unclear if participants in a negotiation accept the technology. Keywords-negotiation; negotiation support; emotion I.