Scope

The field of Group Decision and Negotiation focuses on decision processes with at least two participants and a common goal. Such processes are complex and self-organising and constitute multi-participant, multi-criteria, ill-structured, dynamic, creative, and often evolutionary problems. Major approaches include (1) information systems, in particular negotiation support systems (NSSs) and group decision support systems (GDSs), (2) cognitive and behavioural sciences as applied to group decision and negotiation, (3) conflict analysis and resolution, (4) applied game theory, experiment and social choice, (5) artificial intelligence, and (6) management science as it relates to group decision making and negotiation. Many research initiatives combine two or more of these approaches.

Group decisions and negotiations can be performed in an intra-organisational as well as an inter-organisational context. Both consist of complex processes, including preference elicitation, proposals and counter-proposals, preference adjustment, and choice. Communication and decision making are the two key process steps in Group Decision and Negotiation and thus require sophisticated support in many ways.

Application areas of Group Decision and Negotiation include intra-organisational and inter-organisational coordination (as in operations management and integrated design, production, finance, marketing and distribution functions, such as coordination of all phases of the life cycle of a product), computer-supported collaborative work and meetings, electronic negotiations including negotiating agents and negotiation support systems, labour-management negotiations, inter-organisational, intercultural negotiations, environmental negotiations, and many others. See the Group Decision and Negotiation journal for further illustrations of the scope of the GDN field.

Themes and areas of interest:

Methodological & Theoretical Foundations

  • Auction theory
  • Bargaining theory
  • Collaboration engineering
  • Conflict analysis and resolution
  • Design research in negotiation systems
  • Game theory
  • Multicriteria decision making
  • Decision and negotiation analysis
  • Social choice theory
  • Modelling and simulation using software agents
  • Machine learning

Technological Foundations

  • Animation and visualization
  • Artificial intelligence methods in GDN
  • Distributed GDN technologies
  • E-negotiation platforms and systems
  • Multi-agent systems
  • Virtual worlds and environments for GDN
  • Collaborative Information Technologies

Behavioral Aspects

  • Comparisons of auction and negotiation mechanisms
  • Creativity in GDN
  • Characteristics of cross-cultural and intracultural negotiation
  • Facilitation
  • Impact, adoption and evaluation of GDN technologies
  • Interaction of human and software agents
  • Experimental studies in GDN
  • Learning and teaching

Applications

  • Business
  • Policy
  • Diplomacy and International Relationships
  • Education
  • Water and Natural Resources
  • Sustainability
  • Software engineering

 

Research in Group Decision and Negotiation has continued to expand, and many new research directions have been proposed. At GDN conferences, we encourage researchers to present research in Group Decision and Negotiation even if (in fact, especially if) it does not fit into any of the above areas.