Satisfiability and completeness of protocols for electronic negotiations

Many of the existing e-negotiation support systems are built around one negotiation protocol. This effectively restricts their use to those problems and interactions that had been assumed a priori by the systems’ designers. Field and experimental studies show that the way the negotiation process is structured depends on the negotiators’ characteristics, the problem and the context in which an agreement is sought. It has also been recognized in literature that both the way a problem is represented and the solution process implemented strongly influence the results at which individual decision-makers and negotiators arrive. Building on the e-negotiation Montreal taxonomy this article proposes a more complete typology of protocols and their characteristics. It also presents the elements of a theory for the design of negotiation protocols. The proposed protocol formalism allows for the construction of models from which users can select a protocol instance that suits them and/or is appropriate for the problem at-hand. Furthermore, this formalism allows for the construction of protocols that can be modified during the user–system interactions. The paper also presents two key requirements for negotiation protocols embedded in support systems, namely their satisfiability and completeness.