BATNA is the minimum acceptable
value for a negotiated agreement. This value is determined by individual party's
knowledge of the negotiated issues and options. Any offer
which is higher than BATNA is better than an impasse. During the negotiation
process, the compromise comes from the offer which
is more attractive than both parties' BATNA.
A compromise or agreement is the
package (combination of options across
all issues) that both negotiators jointly agree upon
after exchanging a sequence of offers.
To set up each new negotiation,
INSPIRE has to be provided with a minimum of three pieces of information:
the unique name of the negotiation, and two
user names. Currently the list of issues being negotiated
must also be provided to the INSPIRE administrators before the negotiation
begins. Thus a "configuration" is defined as the combination of participants
and issues that constitute a particular negotiation.
The joint outcome is the compromise
that both parties settle upon after a series of offer exchanges. INSPIRE has
a post-settlement stage, during which it uses the preference information provided
by each user to determine whether it is possible to construct a new offer
that is better than the joint outcome for at least one party, and
equally good or better than the joint outcome for the other party; this analysis
is known as "improving the joint outcome."
The rating displayed on an offer
is computed from the preference ratings you provide in the first part of your
negotiation. Remember that your counterpart's rating of a package is unlikely
to be the same as yours. Your counterpart never sees the ratings that you
see on a package, since what he/she sees is based on his/her initial preference
ratings.
This means that the numerical difference between the ratings of two offers
will not be the same as the difference in the ratings seen by your counterpart.
For example, a revised offer which lowers the rating of your package by 10
points from your previous offer may only raise your counterpart's rating of
that package by 3 points or may even lower your counterpart's rating.
A topic of discussion that is
of particular interest in a negotiation. Each issue has a range of alternatives
or options, one of which must ultimately be agreed upon by
the negotiators in order to achieve a compromise.
The exchange of offers and counter-offers
can be seen only from one negotiator's perspective (as in the History of Offers
graph) or, if both negotiators agree, from the perspective of both of them.
One dimension presents ratings of one negotiator and the second dimension
those of the second negotiator. With each offer, ratings of both negotiators
are associated. Thus you may review the changes in the ratings (concessions)
accepted by each negotiator.
While the common meaning of the
term "negotiation" is well known, a Web based system such as INSPIRE needs
to give it a specific technical meaning because there are multiple users conducting
multiple negotiations on possibly the same or different sets of issues on
the system, via a common set of Web pages which may be visited in a different
order each time. To keep things organized, each "negotiation" is uniquely
identified by a negotiation name, and defined
as the complete sequence of interactions between INSPIRE and a particular
pair of users (beginning with preference elicitation, continuing through offer
exchange, reaching agreement, and ending with post-settlement analysis), on
a particular set of issues. Thus, the same pair of users may conduct more
than one negotiation on the same set of issues, but for each instance the
negotiation name will be different.
In combination with the user
name, a negotiation name uniquely identifies an INSPIRE negotiation. A user can conduct multiple negotiations
simultaneously on the system using different negotiation names. Unlike your
user name, your negotiation name is not displayed by the system to
your counterpart.
One of the alternative values
that an issue can take. For example, the issue "Tolerable
product failure rate" may have the options "3%", "5%" and "10%".
Prenegotiation is the first phase
of a negotiation. It refers to the initial period (prior to exchange of any
offers) when one prepares for the negotiation. Some activities involved in
this phase include problem definition, preference elicitation, and evaluation
of alternative packages.
A "settlement" is the same as
an agreement or compromise, and "post-settlement" refers to the period
after the first compromise has been achieved. (If your first compromise was
not as good as INSPIRE thinks it possible for both sides to achieve, INSPIRE
suggests that you continue into the post-settlement stage and try to improve
your joint outcome.)
Rating
Rating is the core activity of
prenegotiation preparation. The purpose of rating
is to use numerical expression to clearify negotiator's preference and utility
level of individual negotiation issue, option
and package. In INSPIRE, the user is required to specify
these three ratings according to personal preference and knowledge. The utility
function of individual negotiator is generated not only from the composition
of the issue and option ratings but also from the decomposition of package
evaluation. According to the utility function, any adjustment of the package
evaluation may lead to variation of utility level of other packages.
This is a name used by INSPIRE
during login and throughout the negotiation. Since it is the only name displayed
by the system to your counterpart, you can preserve your anonymity by choosing
an arbitrary user name.
In combination with the negotiation name,
a user name uniquely identifies one of the two participants in a given INSPIRE
negotiation. A user name is specific to a given
negotiation, and can be reused in another negotiation. Thus a user name does
not uniquely identify a real user (and is therefore not like a Unix login-id).
A utility function is a subjective
measurement that expresses the relative value of different package
by using a numerical scale. The numerical scale used is arbitrary. It typically
ranges either from 0 to 1 or from 1 to 100. The minimum number expresses the
least desirable and least preferred package. The highest number represents
the most desirable and preferred package.
