Streams

Stream organizers:

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.

Stream organizers:

Tomasz Wachowicz, Katowice School of Economics, Poland

Danielle Morais, Federal University of Pernambuco, Brazil

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

Stream organizer:

Bilyana Martinovski, Stockholm University, Sweden

Stream description:

Emotion plays an important role in group decision and negotiation activities even if they are defined by rigid rules. In a group context, whether the group consists of 3 or thousands of participants, emotion becomes an inter-subjective experience and a factor influencing the process and outcome of group decision and negotiation. We, therefore, invite contributions to GDN2019, which explore various questions related to emotion in group decision and negotiation, such as:

• How does the size of the group influence emotion in group decision and negotiation?
• How does emotion become inter-subjective?
• What role does emotion play in connectedness?
• What are the functions of various emotions in group decision and negotiation?
• How do emotions influence group decision and negotiation processes, contents and outcomes, and vice versa?
• What affects emotion in group decision and negotiation: culture, biology, activity, communication, language?
• What measures and methods offer reliable data for the study of emotion in group decision and negotiation?
• What are the communicative means for the realization of emotion in group decision and negotiation?
• How is emotion related to ideology and identity expressed in group decision and negotiation contexts?
• Is there ’emotional intelligence’ and how does it relate to other types of intelligence employed in group decision and negotiation?
• What methods are suitable for the measure of emotional intelligence in group decision and negotiation?
• How do different types of media affect emotion in group decision and negotiation contexts?

Stream organizers:

Mareike Schoop, University of Hohenheim, Germany

Philipp Melzer, University of Hohenheim, Germany

Rudolf Vetschera, University of Vienna, 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 NS3 stream. We also encourage research addressing digital transformation in relation to negotiation, i.e. how negotiation support systems transform organisations, processes, and practices.

We solicit papers looking at 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 as 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. Furthermore, we encourage papers investigating processes of (digital) transformation in organisations affecting negotiation technology, negotiation media, and negotiation costs.

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:

1. To show the latest research in negotiation support systems and their use in e-negotiation processes.
2. To discuss a holistic approach to support human negotiators in complex processes.
3. To discuss the design and implementation issues of software agents for and in GDN.
4. To explore the role of agents in homogenous and heterogeneous environments.
5. To explore strategic reasoning and behaviours in argumentation-based negotiations.

Topics of interest include but are not limited to:

• Bilateral, multi-bilateral and multi-lateral e-negotiations
• Electronic mediation and mediation support
• Cross-cultural online negotiations
• Electronic mediation and facilitation
• Emerging applications for e-negotiations (e.g., crowdsourcing, social networks)
• Machine learning as a research method in negotiation research

Stream organizers:

Zhen Zhang, Dalian University of Technology, China.  

Yucheng Dong, Sichuan University, China.  

Francisco Chiclana, De Montfort University, UK.  

Enrique Herrera-Viedma, University of Granada, Granada, Spain.

Stream description:

Group decision making (GDM) is a process in which at least two participants try to achieve a solution for a predefined decision problem. In order to obtain a satisfactory solution for a group decision making problem, a consensus process is usually needed in which decision makers have to discuss, negotiate and modify their opinions to obtain a satisfied consensus level.

The decision environments now become more and more complex with the rapid development of ICT and new decision paradigms, such as web 2.0, social network and e-democracy. Intelligent group decision making and consensus process has also attracted the attention from academic, researchers and practitioners in different fields.

The aim of this stream is to provide a forum for researchers and practitioners working jointly to discuss the state of art of intelligent group decision making and consensus process. The topics include but are not limited to

• Information fusion in group decision making
• Managing incomplete information in group decision making and consensus
• Opinion dynamics in group decision making and consensus
• Social network group decision making and consensus
• Large-scale group decision making
• Linguistic group decision making and consensus
• Intelligent decision support systems for group decision making and consensus
• Applications of group decision making and consensus

Stream organizers:
Pascale Zaraté, Toulouse Capitole University, France

Stream description:

Making a decision for a group engaged in a common task is a difficult challenge. There are several kinds of group decision making processes. This stream addresses Collaborative Decision Making processes. By Collaborative Decision Making processes, we intend that involved participants must pool their efforts in order to define and work on the achievement of a common goal. They have to integrate multiple points of view which reveal to be difficult. They have to work together, although not necessarily in the same place or at the same time. Decisional processes are then complex and involve a non-closed set of actors. The difficult point for decision-makers is to make a balance between their own preferences and the building of common preferences within the group. One direct application in the daily life of such Collaborative Decision-Making processes can be implemented through the e_democraty which is defined as a form of government in which all adult citizens are presumed to be eligible to participate equally in the proposal, development, and creation of laws.

The purpose of this stream is to allow researchers to present methodologies, mathematical models, and software supporting Collaborative Decision-Making processes. Submitted papers/abstracts can describe both theoretical and empirical studies like for example survey, field study, case study, experimentation…

Stream organizers:

Haiyan Xu, College of Economics and Management, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing, China

Shawei He, College of Economics and Management, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing, China

Shinan Zhao, School of Economics and Management, Jiangsu University of Science and Technology, Zhenjiang, China

Stream description:

Risk evaluation over business, programs, and conflicts are commonly observed and extensively analyzed in the real world. Risks in complex systems have been paid increasing attentions by researchers. Formal methodologies have been developed to help understand risks in negotiation and discover courses of action to reach desired agreements. The main purpose of this stream is to provide a forum to present novel risk evaluation models and their applications to negotiation. The topics of interest includes but are not limited to:

• Risk evaluation models and tools
• Conflict intervention
• Negotiation models and tools
• Negotiation strategies with third-party intervention
• Attitude and behavior of intervention