In this paper we analyze how the way in which the principal's preferences are visualized may affect the accuracy of representation of this principal by their agent. We study the processes of multi-issue electronic representative negotiations conducted by agents on behalf of their principals by means of the negotiation support system that implements a simple decision support tool for eliciting the preferences and building a system of cardinal ratings for feasible negotiation offers. First, we investigate the accuracy of agents' scoring systems and compare their concordance to the preferential information provided to them by their principals by means of single verbal description and two different visualization techniques, one using bar graphs and the second-circles (pies). The concordance is measured by means of the notions of ordinal and cardinal accuracy. Then we analyze how the scoring systems with various inaccuracy indexes influence the agents' perception of negotiation process, i.e. the interpretation of concessions made by parties and the structures of concession paths. We also study what is an impact of inaccurate scoring systems on the negotiation outcomes, i.e. the final contracts, their ratings and efficiency. The results obtained show that the bars are slightly better in more precise representation of principals preferences. They allow agent to determine a little more accurate scoring systems, which help to understand the negotiation process better by minimizing the cardinal error of evaluation of the offers in concession paths. Yet, no significant impact on the outcomes have been found. An interesting prescriptive conclusion that can be drawn is that to assure an adequate representation of principal's preferences the agents should be offered the bar-based visualization. Also, a checkup mechanism should be introduced to the preference elicitation procedure that assure the agents to be ordinally concordant with the priorities of their principal's preferences.
In this paper we analyze the possibility of applying the technique for order preferences by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) to building the scoring system for negotiating offers. TOPSIS is a multiple criteria decision making method that is based on measuring distances between alternatives under consideration and two bipolar reference alternatives, a positive and negative ideal. Thus the criteria used for the evaluation of alternatives should be described using strong scales. However, in the negotiation, the issues are very often described qualitatively, which results in ordinal or even nominal variables that must be taken into consideration in offers' evaluation process. What is more, TOPSIS may be applied to solving the discrete decision problems while the negotiation space may be defined by the means of continuous variables too. In this paper we try to modify the TOPSIS algorithm to make it applicable to negotiation support and, moreover, discuss the following methodological issues: using TOPSIS for a negotiation problem with continuous negotiation space; selecting the distance measure for adequate representation of negotiator's preferences and measuring distances for qualitative issues. Finally, we propose a simple additional mechanism that allows for building the TOPSIS-based scoring system for negotiating offers and does not involve negotiators in time consuming and tiresome preference elicitation process. This mechanism requires from negotiators to construct examples of offers that represent some categories of quality and then by using a goal programming approach it infers all the parameters required by the TOPSIS algorithm. We also
Abstract. In this paper we consider the idea of negotiations conducted by means of the software support tools. We present the advantages of the negotiation support systems discussing their different functions and typologies focusing later on the possibilities of decision support they can give to the negotiating parties in all negotiation phases. After presenting the most popular solutions we introduce also two of our own procedures that can be applied in the pre-negotiation phase for eliciting negotiators' preferences and building the offers' scoring systems for the parties. The first one is based on the Hammond, Keeney and Raiffa's procedure of even swaps, while the second derives from the Roy's ELECTRE-TRI. Both of them can be easily applied as the analytic engines in electronic negotiation systems replacing the classical additive scoring systems. We discuss also the issue of using different scoring systems in the successive negotiation phases.
The negotiation template, which defines a set of potential negotiation offers, is traditionally evaluated by means of the simple additive weighting method (SAW). However, some recent research reports on the potential problems and inconsistencies in using and interpreting SAW-based scores. Thus, in this paper we consider the issue of evaluating negotiation offers when the negotiator's preferences are expressed verbally. We present a new approach called Measuring Attractiveness near Reference Situations (MARS), which combines the algorithms of two multiple criteria decision making methods: ZAPROS and MACBETH. Applying the elements of ZAPROS allows identifying a small set of reference alternatives that consists of the best resolution levels for all the negotiation issues but one. In pair-wise comparisons of these alternatives negotiators need to evaluate trade-offs only, which means deciding which concessions are better to be made. Using the elements of MACBETH allows determining the strong interval scale based on verbal judgments defined by negotiators at the beginning of the preference elicitation process. We study in detail the legitimacy of hybridizing ZAPROS and MACBETH that differ in their philosophies of decision support as well as discuss the drawbacks of these two MCDM methods and propose some alternative solutions that make this approach applicable to supporting negotiators in the evaluation of negotiation offers. Finally, we present an example in which we indicate the differences in the negotiation offers' scoring process conducted by means of MARS and the traditional ZAPROS and MACBETH procedures.
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