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Negotiation Support Through Interactive Dominance Relationship Specification

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Abstract

Preference evaluation is a key aspect of multi-issue negotiation support, especially when the set of possible alternative offers is large. Approaches based on utility (value) functions have been used to elicit negotiators’ preferences so that they can assess alternatives and concessions. A disadvantage of eliciting preferences is the requirement that the negotiators provide precise values, which may cause errors and inconsistencies. This paper proposes a protocol for eliciting preferences, which is based on an adaptation of the Flexible and Interactive Tradeoff (FITradeoff) multicriteria method. This method allows negotiators to provide incomplete information, which is used to construct a linear programming model to determine the dominance relationship of the alternatives. During the exchange of offers, the models are refined and the dominance relationship becomes increasingly more complete. The negotiation protocol is based on reducing the current set of possible agreement packages, by removing those that are not of interest to both parties, which facilitates reaching an agreement. A Pareto-optimality analysis of the final agreement package is conducted in the post-settlement phase, also under partial information provided by the parties, which is a challenge when exact information about the weights of issues is not known.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would also like to record their gratitude to the late professor Gregory Kersten, for his collaboration and support during the elaboration of this research. Specially, the first author of this paper, would like to record her gratitude to him for all the insightful discussions they had during the two visits she made to Concordia University. The first was in May 2019, and the second was in November, 2019. As a part of her post doctoral studies, she visited Concordia University to meet Gregory and to work with him on this research project related to eliciting preferences for negotiation support. Most of the ideas presented in this paper were developed during her visits to Concordia, in which she had the opportunity to learn a great deal from Gregory given his long and distinguished background in negotiation support.

Funding

The authors are most grateful to CNPq, CAPES and FACEPE, for the financial support provided.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Av. da Arquitetura - Cidade Universitária, Recife, PE, Brazil

    Eduarda Asfora Frej, Danielle Costa Morais & Adiel Teixeira de Almeida

  2. Center for Decision Systems and Information Development–CDSID, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Av. da Arquitetura–Cidade Universitária, Recife, PE, 50.630-970, Brazil

    Eduarda Asfora Frej & Adiel Teixeira de Almeida

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  1. Eduarda Asfora Frej
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  2. Danielle Costa Morais
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  3. Adiel Teixeira de Almeida
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Correspondence to Eduarda Asfora Frej.

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Appendix 1

Appendix 1

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Table 2 Set of all possible packages considered for the Mosico-Fado problem
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Frej, E.A., Morais, D.C. & de Almeida, A.T. Negotiation Support Through Interactive Dominance Relationship Specification. Group Decis Negot 31, 591–620 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10726-021-09761-y

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