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The book explores the potential of holistic multi-criteria decision support to facilitate negotiations, including those conducted through electronic negotiation systems. It critically examines classical decision analysis approaches, highlighting their limitations due to negotiators' cognitive limitations. Drawing on findings from international experiments, the book demonstrates how these limitations lead to errors in preference definition, resulting in imprecise assessment models and unreliable decision support at the bargaining and post-negotiation stages.
To address these challenges, the book introduces holistic preference analysis methods that overcome cognitive barriers, including the MARS and unMAGIC approaches. Because they are based on holistic decision support principles, these methods provide a more cognitively accessible alternative to traditional decision analysis tools, enabling more accurate preference modeling in negotiation contexts. The final section integrates these methods into electronic negotiation support systems, showcasing the eNego platform as an advanced decision support environment. The design and implementation of a hybrid iterative support mechanism in eNego, combining UTA, MARS, and direct rating, are detailed. Empirical results from negotiation experiments confirm the effectiveness of the resulting holistic decision support in improving preference analysis, negotiation quality, and user evaluations of use and usefulness.
Offering a unique blend of theoretical insight and empirical validation, this book is an essential resource for researchers, practitioners, and system designers seeking to enhance negotiation processes through cognitively informed decision support methods.
List of contents
Introduction.-
PART ONE: Negotiation and decision-making.- Negotiation: definition, conditions, and characteristics.- Negotiation phases.- Formal approach and its view of the negotiation process.- Problems with an accurate prenegotiation preparation and specification of scoring systems.-
PART TWO: Holistic Multiple Criteria Decision-Aid Methods and Techniques.- Multiple criteria decision aid: introduction.- UTA-based approach.- MARS.- unMAGIC.-
PART THREE: Holistic Decision Aid Protocol in Software-Supported Negotiations.- Negotiation support systems and electronic negotiation systems.- eNego system.- Empirical findings from negotiation experiments in the eNego system.- Summary.- Recap and Outlook.- References.
About the author
Tomasz Wachowicz is an associate professor in the Department of Operations Research at the University of Economics in Katowice, Poland. His research interests include negotiation analysis, negotiation support, multiple criteria group decision-making, and behavioral operations research. From 2003 to 2020, he collaborated with the InterNeg Research Centre at Concordia University (Montreal, Canada), an international research center specializing on the Internet and international negotiations, where, together with Prof. Gregory Kersten, he co-led the international research project GRIN – Global Research on Inspire Negotiation, which involved six universities from Europe, North America, and Asia focused on analyzing the cognitive capabilities of negotiators based on international experiments conducted within the Inspire electronic negotiation system. He has served as the principal investigator or a key participant in six other research projects funded by the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education (PMSHE) and the Polish National Science Center (PNSC), including two international projects. Tomasz Wachowicz is the author of over 100 research papers and two books. He has participated in more than 50 scientific conferences, delivering three keynote speeches. Since 2013, he has been a member of the program committee for the international conference on Group Decision and Negotiation. Since 2021, he has been a member of theExecutive of the INFORMS Section on Group Decision and Negotiation, currently serving as Vice President for Meetings. He is also the Vice President of the Polish chapter of INFORMS. Additionally, he is a collaborating editor for the
Group Decision and Negotiation journal and the deputy editor-in-chief of the
Multiple Criteria Decision Making journal. He has 18 years of teaching experience in courses such as operations research, electronic negotiation, negotiation and mediation, multiple criteria decision-making, game theory, computer science, decision support systems, artificial intelligence, simulation, project management, and project team management.
His non-academic interests include hiking, mountain biking, and classical music. He is fluent in English and has pre-intermediate proficiency in German and Spanish.
