An organizational model for transitional negotiations: concepts, design and applications

Abstract

Negotiations generally tend to focus efforts on attaining optimality in single-problem contexts that are ad hoc, disparate and temporary in nature. Once negotiators reach agreement, the process usually attains closure and the long-term impact of the outcome is rarely considered. In organizational settings, decisions involving quid pro quos are, however, made on a continuous basis. Since organizational environments are constantly in flux, negotiated solutions that appeared successful on a given problem at first might no longer work out to be effective in the long run. We postulate that organizations evolve from one state to another and negotiations play an important part in these transitions. From this perspective, decision-making in organizations or between them can be modeled using sequential Markov chains that converge on homeostasis. This leads to a prescriptive approach for transitional negotiations that allow for assessment of the long-term impact of decisions and suggest acceptance of possible short-term losses in favor of the better payoffs that are to come. We provide a hydraulic dam example to illustrate the transitional aspect of decision-making over time. Based on earlier successful GDSS, we also suggest a software architecture that would allow the proposed theoretical model to be implemented as an organization negotiation support system with practical benefits.

Group Support Systems: Concepts to Practice

“…Given the enormity of differences in opinion at the start, both facilitators and observers were pessimistic about the probability of the emotional commitment created during the meeting continuing into the future -"will it last" (Sankaran and Bui 2008). There remained some concern about the position and power base of the outlier -however this particular person was regarded as an outlier in normal work situations, and so there was a view f r o m the observers that his behavior may not have serious consequences for that of the rest of the group.…”

Collaborative Decision Making

“…The recent growing evolution of the enegotiation domain shows that the previously described situations are more and more common. This leads to new kind of systems supporting negotiations in an electronic way of communication the Group Decision Negotiation Support Systems (see for example Sankaran & Bui, 2008).…”

“…As underlined by Sankaran and Bui (2008), organizations routinely make decisions that require consultations with multiple participants. Combining all points of view towards a consensus acceptable to all parties is always a challenge.…”

Negotiation Support and E-negotiation Systems: An Overview

“…This service is provided by organizations which often provide additional services, including matching, mediation, legal and competitive analysis (Rule 2002).…”

“…3), new generation internet technologies that allow ad hoc integration of systems residing on different computers and the introduction of web-services made possible the construction of software platforms which are capable of constructing in real time a system according to the specifications provided by its users. Some platforms have been designed to support all e-commerce functions so that the negotiation phase is one of several activities in the commerce value chain (Runyon and Stewart 1987). An example of such platform is SEMPER which, in addition to security, payment and other configurable components has also Fair Internet Trader, a simple communication model-based negotiation component (Lacoste et al 2000).…”