Supporting the negotiation life cycle
William N. Robinson, V.Ya. Volkov · Communications of the ACM · 1998
In our increasingly networked world, a capacity to negotiate will be a critical factor of success, or even survival. Supporting the Negotiation Life CycleIn negotiation, participants bring their goals to a bargaining table, strategically share information, and search for alternatives that are mutually beneficial.Negotiation is complex in that a global understanding of all goals, solutions, and their interactions can be extremely complex.Participants may not know or want to reveal their goals and solutions for some goals may have complex interactions with the solutions for other goals.The interactions can lead to participant conflicts or coalitions.Without negotiation techniques, participants often focus on persuading others to accept a ready solution, rather than seeking new solutions that may be acceptable to all.Expert human negotiators address these problems through a combination of social and analytical techniques [6].Experts provide strategic advice on when to generate new Negotiation behavior is so broad and powerful that it applies wherever multiple agents interact-from the strategic posturing prior to agreements among nations, to the "handshake" protocol between connecting computer modems.Unfortunately, negotiation is a complex, difficult task-for humans or software agents.By understanding the negotiation life cycle, an agent can apply tools at the appropriate time and place to improve negotiation processes, products, and perspectives.