Group Decision and Negotiation

In light of the pervasiveness of collaborative decision making and technology in organizations, this research examines computer mediated collaboration using the lens of social capital. We draw from the Distributed Cognition Theory and others for our socio-technical investigation that incorporates the technical component as the artifact of electronic memory (group memory), and the social component as the history of interactions between members (group history). We study these under the mediating influence of the relational social capital dimensions of relational closeness and relational trust. Our study shows how social capital adds an important flavor to collaborative performance. We highlight how the traditional premise of memory being an unequivocal enhancer of group performance gets altered if one fails to consider the influence of relational social capital in the equation. We propose to practitioners that collaborative technology that offers memory cannot be viewed independently, but as a vehicle that impacts performance through the dynamics of social capital of the group. Most importantly, our research reinforces the need for a novel perspective to collaborative development. With the diaspora of technological advancement, there needs to be a transition in perceiving collaborative development as a concurrent, rather than a sequential, process of discussion and development of group activity.

A negotiation accord is often the result of an intense, laborious, and evolutionary negotiation process. During this process, disputing parties are confronted with goal, judgment, and outcome conflict. This article demonstrates the utility of a conflict resolution framework—Evolutionary Systems Design (ESD)—by using a Negotiation Support System. ESD seeks to guide negotiators to move their individual goals and judgments in such a way as to enhance the chance of achieving a common solution. As illustrated by the use of NEGOTIATOR, a multiattribute utility negotiation support system, we argue that computer mediation can prove to be an effective means to implement the ESD framework.

The dynamics of a board of directors resemble those of other groups. They are either positive or negative in their flow of communication, their dispute resolution style, their problem solving ability and their ability to make decisions. This article discusses a model of change theory that is used in evaluating the effectiveness of a board of directors and assisting it to make changes for the betterment of the organization it serves.

Influence allocation processes are voting and opinion aggregating methods that allow members to distribute some or all of their decision making influence to others in the group in order to exploit not only the group's knowledge of the alternatives, but its knowledge of itself. Only with the common use of group decision support systems (GDSS) has their use become practical. In this paper we reconsider SPAN, an influence allocation process introduced by MacKinnon (1966a). Experimental comparison shows SPAN to be significantly better at selecting a correct option from a set of options than two common voting methods. An alternative influence allocation process that we call RCON (Rational Consensus), is based on a weighting method proposed by DeGroot (1974) and has been explicated as a normative standard for combining opinion by Lehrer and Wagner (1981). The judgmental inputs to SPAN would appear to be logically related to those for RCON. Submitting the SPAN inputs from the experiment, transformed in this logical way, to the RCON process results in somewhat better performance than with SPAN. However, evidence indicated that the two methods are conceptually and psychologically sufficiently different that an experimental comparison is needed between them.

Many complex decisions are made in a group environment, where the decision is made jointly by a committee or group structure. The individual group members are often not equally qualified to contribute equitably to the decision process, or may have different saliences (desires) to influence the decision. A quantitative knowledge of the players' decisional power is useful for better understanding of the group decision process, and could even be used in weighted voting within the group structure. We adapt the REMBRANDT suite of decision models (multiplicative AHP and SMART) to measure decisional power in groups, and we generalise this to cater for the case where power itself is deemed to be multidimensional in nature, and the case of uncertain subjective judgements of power amongst group members.

Global risk and disaster management challenges are complex and ill-structured group decision processes characterized by time-sensitive, multi-faceted, and self-organizing negotiations, high decision stakes, extreme uncertainty, and dynamic, value-laden tradeoffs. Drama theory asserts that conflict resolution requires players to engage in a rational-emotional process of re-defining both the game and their “positions” in it until agreement on a satisfactory resolution is reached. While game theory has been widely applied to problems dealing with hazards, risk, and disasters, it assumes fixed players, options, and preferences, and hence does not allow for the re-definition of the conflict under consideration. Results show that drama theory constitutes a flexible and powerful tool for modeling group decision and negotiation processes involving natural, man-made, and health-related hazards, risk, and catastrophes in the post-911 security environment by modeling emotional responses that, throughout the course of a game, can lead to unanticipated reactions and change basic assumptions. This is achieved through the use of option boards to construct and analyze emergency, disaster, or crisis models that are structurally similar to game models. Finally, drama theory is compared and contrasted to conflict analysis, which developed from common roots in metagame analysis. The strengths and weaknesses of drama theory are critically evaluated in the context of global climate change and the mounting risk of a worldwide influenza pandemic.

In real bargaining problems, players care not only about their own shares, but also about others’ shares. In addition, a player’ attitude toward others depends on how this player feels he is being treated. To model such preferences, the Rubinstein bargaining game is reconsidered, where players’ preferences is characterized as altruism and spite. First, a subgame perfect equilibrium (SPE) is constructed, where player’s strategy depends on the opponent’s share through altruistic and spiteful preferences. The uniqueness of SPE is shown if it shares with SPE in the classical Rubinstein case: no delay and stationarity. Then, a comparative statics analysis with respect to players’ altruism and spite is performed. It is shown that the equilibrium share of a player is negatively related to the opponent’s global spite and his own global altruism, and positively to global altruism of the other one and the global spite of himself. It is also found that the impact of the intrinsically altruistic and spiteful levels of a player on equilibrium share depends on this player’s attitudes towards the opponent. Furthermore, it is found that a more positive attitude towards the opponent leads to the increase (decrease) of this player’s share if this player is more (less) intrinsically altruistic than the opponent. Finally, we establish a relationship with asymmetric two-person Nash bargaining game. It is found that bargaining power of a player decreases with the globally altruistic and spiteful preferences of himself, and increases with the opponent’s. It is further found that the effects of players’ attitudes towards the opponent on their own bargaining power depend on the gap between the intrinsic altruistic and spiteful levels of players.

We study the bargaining problem in the dynamic framework. The classical way of solving a dynamic bargaining problem is to transform the extensive form game into the normal form and then apply the theory of bargaining well developed for normal form games. This means that the parties sign a binding contract in the beginning of the game which defines their actions for the full duration of the game. In this article, we consider the setting where the players monitor the contract as the game evolves. The main purpose of the article is to study conditions under which the players do not have a rationale to renegotiate a new contract at any intermediate time period; i.e., the contract is time consistent. Time consistency restricts the set of bargaining solutions in dynamic games. We will show that time consistency of the contract is guaranteed if the bargaining solution satisfies the controversial independence-of-irrelevant-alternatives property.