Modeling Distributive and Integrative Negotiations. Review and Revised Characterization

The development of user-friendly negotiation support systems enabled negotiators to obtain advice directly from the system rather than via an intermediary. The emergence of e-commerce and the development of negotiating software agents further contributed to the automation of negotiation activities. These developments exposed inconsistencies in the descriptions of integrative and distributed negotiations. They also showed limitations of the existing modeling methods. These methods were designed to support negotiation experts who themselves had to make distinctions between distributive and integrative processes. Inconsistent descriptions and the lack of formal models that could be embedded in systems often contribute to a mechanical approach to negotiations compounding the difficulty in the design and development of software that can be used in real-life situations. The contradictions between the characteristics of integrative and distributive negotiations are discussed and assumptions for these two types as well as qualitative differences between them are proposed. Negotiation literature suggests that it is the negotiators' perception of the problem that leads to the their focus on either distributive or integrative conflict resolution. This may be the case for negotiations that are not supported with software. In case of the latter it is the design principles and information processing that that differentiates these two types of negotiations. Negotiation representation based on the information requirements for different types of conflict is proposed.