Streams
Conflict Resolution
Stream organisers:
Liping Fang, Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada
Keith W. Hipel, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Canada
D. Marc Kilgour, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Canada
Stream description:
Strategic conflict arises whenever humans interact, individually or in groups. New, recently-developed methodologies and techniques that can help analysts understand strategic conflicts and provide strategic support to negotiators have been of great benefit to many decision makers. New theoretical issues are being explored, and at the same time new software systems are making modeling easier and analytical results clearer. Theoretical and practical advances have been utilized to study strategic conflicts arising in diverse areas including environmental management, global warming, energy projects, the food crisis, economic disparities, international trade and aging infrastructure. The main objective of the Stream on Conflict Resolution is to provide a forum for discussion of research advances on the development of formal approaches to conflict resolution with insightful applications in a range of domains. Prospective authors are cordially invited to submit original research developments and applications.
Emotion in Group Decision and Negotiation
Stream organiser:
Bilyana Martinovski, Stockholm University, Sweden
Stream description:
Empirical observations show that emotions play an important role in group-decision taking and negotiation activities even if they are defined by rigid rules. In a group context, emotion is not anymore only a subjective experience, it becomes an inter-subjective experience and a factor influencing group decision taking and negotiation (GDN). We therefore invite contributions which explore questions related to emotion in GDN, such as:
- How do emotions become inter-subjective?
- How do emotions influence GDN and vice versa?
- What are the neural conditions and function of emotion in GDN?
- What are the communicative means for the realization of emotion in GDN?
- How is emotion related to ideology and identity expressed in GDN?
- How do different types of media affect emotion in GDN contexts?
- Are there different cultural aspects of emotion in GDN?
- What methods could be used for the study of emotion in GDN?
Micro-Processes of Group Decision Making Support
Stream organisers:
Mike Yearworth, University of Exeter, UK
Leroy White, University of Warwick, UK
Fran Ackermann, Curtin University, Australia
Stream description:
There is a growing interest within one part of the field of group decision support research towards a more detailed investigation of group decision support practices. This interest is, in part, reflected in the recent GDN conference streams which took place in Warsaw (2015) and Bellingham (2016). This research recognizes the need to develop an in-depth understanding of what occurs in the milieu of group decision-making processes, in particular in the relationships between the social, behavioral, and the material entities. We refer to these relationships as micro- processes which take the form of a portmanteau for a burgeoning stream of different but related research that focuses on practices and routines for supporting decision making in groups and society. This focus also emphasizes the connections among the entities involved in group decision support activities, including but not limited to the role of facilitation and modeling in negotiating decisions. We encourage papers that focus on issues such as facilitation, intervention and implementation. Authors intending to submit an article for the GDN Special Issue on Micro-Processes in Group Decision Making should endeavour to present their papers at this session.
Negotiation Support Systems and Studies
Stream organisers:
Gregory Kersten, Concordia University, Canada
Sabine Köszegi, Vienna University of Technology, Austria
Stream description:
Business and personal interactions increasingly take place online and they contribute to building new relationships and associations. People involved in these interactions may have to engage in e-negotiations with using such common systems as email and Skype, support tools and aids that are often embedded in business systems, as well as dedicated electronic negotiation support systems (NSSs). Researchers, developers and practitioners who design and develop NSSs, study their use in the laboratories and in the field, or incorporate NSS components into negotiation, mediation and facilitation are invited to participate in the NSS stream.
We solicit papers looking at either theory or practice, or both. In particular, we seek papers that help bridging the gap between the vast amount of work on face-to-face negotiations and online negotiations as well decision and negotiation aids embedded in negotiation processes. We also seek papers that focus on the design and use of tools for decision support, communication support, document management, or conflict management for the negotiators and mediators in electronic negotiation processes.
One goal of the NS3 stream is to bring together automated approaches (such as multi-agent systems) and support approaches (such as NSSs enabling negotiations between human negotiators). The Stream has the following objectives:
- To show the latest research in negotiation support systems and their use in e-negotiation processes.
- To discuss a holistic approach to support human negotiators in complex processes.
- To discuss the design and implementation issues of software agents for and in GDN.
- To explore the role of agents in homogenous and heterogeneous environments.
- To explore strategic reasoning and behaviours in argumentation-based negotiations.
Topics of interest include:
- Bilateral, multi-bilateral, and multilateral e-negotiations
- Electronic mediation and mediation support
- Cross-cultural online negotiations
- Online mediation and facilitation
- Emerging applications for e-negotiations (e.g., crowdsourcing, social networks)
- Methodological issues and challenges
- Negotiation support tools, systems and platforms
- Negotiation, planning and collective decision-making
- Usability and usefulness of e-negotiation systems
- Agent-based negotiation aid and support
- Design issues; NSS design research
Preference Modeling for Group Decision and Negotiation
Stream organisers:
Adiel Almeida, Federal University of Pernambuco, Brazil
Tomasz Wachowicz, Katowice School of Economics, Poland
Stream description:
A variety of methods, techniques and normative models may be used for supporting group of negotiators and decision makers (DM) in defining their goals, eliciting preferences and building the negotiation offers’ scoring systems, often integrated with multicriteria decision making (MCDM) and game theory. Cognitive issues, formal knowledge and skills of DMs influence the redesigning of existing and designing the new methods for preference modeling and elicitation for group decision and negotiation (GDN) process. In order to make these models and methods more appropriate for real-world decision problems, preference modeling approaches need to be continuously improved, considering behavioural issues and DMs’ limitations regarding information and perception for evaluating preferences.
The main goal of this stream is to create a forum for scientists, researchers and practitioners working on the topic of preference modeling for GDN that will allow to exchange their experience and knowledge, and discussing the recent developments and results of their research. Thus we invite contributors to submit to this stream the papers and sessions. Although not limited to, the stream includes following topics:
- Preference modeling in GDN problems
- Methodological issues of preference analysis
- Preference issues for choosing voting procedures
- Preference modeling for mediation and arbitration
- Preference learning
- Behavioral studies on preference for GDN
- Neuroscience experiments on preference for GDN
- Experimental studies on preference for group decision and negotiation
- Experimental studies on decision makers’ cognitive capabilities and needs for formal support in group decision and negotiation
- Interfaces between GDN and MCDM
- Use of MCDM methods for preference modeling in group decision and negotiation
- Preferences in group decisions for MCDM
- Group decision support based on partial information on preferences
- Handling the imprecise and vague preference information
- Preference aggregation of decision makers versus knowledge aggregation of experts
- Group decision support based on partial information onexperts’ knowledge
Student Stream
Stream organisers:
Mareike Schoop, University of Hohenheim, Germany
Philipp Melzer, University of Hohenheim, Germany
Stream description:
The student stream of GDN 2017 is a new initiative encouraging Bachelor and Master students to submit papers. Topics of interest are all those concerned with Group Decision and/or Negotiation. We encourage students to submit a paper reporting on a thesis or a project and we will provide a platform for junior researchers to present their work and receive valuable feedback from experienced researchers. The student track will allow flexibility to account for individual thematic foci of the students.
Student papers will be short papers and published in the proceedings of Hohenheim University. Copyright will remain with the authors.