Negotiation: From Bargaining to Argumentation

Sides have conflicting goals/preferences, which they try to reconcile, find a compromise. Thus, there still is a common goal, i.e., to find a compromise acceptable to both sides, or to convince each other to change some attitudes. Sides may have reasons to conceal knowledge/information/skills, i.e., be non-cooperative on some issues. What are each other's hard and soft constraints, what can either side offer as compensation? How to resolve conflicts? Simplest form of negotiation is bargaining, i.e., iterative exchange of modified offers. However, true negotiation also involves argumentation, which raises the issue of how to argue convincingly.

From Conflict Research Consortium, University of Colorado, USA http://www.colorado.edu/conflict/peace/treatment/negotn.htm: ``Negotiation can be considered the fundamental form of dispute resolution. Essentially it involves two or more parties working together to examine their interests and needs, and working out a solution that will give the best possible outcome to both sides. This can be done cooperatively, as it is in principled negotiation, or it can be done in a competitive way as is typical in distributive bargaining.''

Negotiation Phases:

• pre-negotiation analysis: exchange information about positions and preferences (it may be in agent's interest to either reveal or conceal preferences, etc.)
• negotiation: offers, counter-offers, arguments to persuade, threats
• post-settlement analysis: may result in re-negotiation or new negotiation of related issues

Negotiation Forms:

• hard bargaining: adversarial, win-lose, competitive
• soft bargaining: concessive, effort to please
• distributive bargaining: dividing a limited amout of ``stuff''
• integrative bargaining (principled negotiation): with each other instead of against each other; interest-based conflict resolution; win-win
  • separate the people from the problem
  • negotiate about interests, not positions
  • invent options for mutual gain
  • insist on objective decision criteria
  • know your BATNA (best alternative to a negotiated agreement)

Examples of negotiation modelling in computational linguistics and AI:

• modelling conflict resolution [Chu-Carroll and Carberry2000]
• game-theoretical model of bargaining in the SIRIDUS project [Ericsson
  2#2
  2000]
• [Sidner1994] proposed an approach to model negotiation; [Larsson2002b] implemented it in a version of GoDiS using an ISU-based approach to dialogue modelling [Ericsson
  2#2
  2000,Larsson2002b];
• appointment negotiation in the Verbmobil project http://verbmobil.dfki.de/
• related topics in AI: modelling negotiating agents, e.g., modelling the reasoning processes of negotiating agents [Koit and Oim2000]
• modelling argumentation: Nice Argument Generator (NAG) by McConnachy and Zuckerman;
• a tutorial system teaching legal argumentation: CATO legal tutorial system [Ashley
  2#2
  2002]

Reading: [Chu-Carroll and Carberry2000]; [Sidner1994]