Multi-Party E-Negotiations: Agents, Alliances and Negotiation Success

Introduction

We live in an increasingly electronic age where computer-mediated communication is becoming a pivotal part in most businesses. Negotiations are no exception, and are more frequently being conducted over email in order to overcome the barriers of time and distance in an ever more globalized economy. I will summarize an article from The International Journal of Conflict Management entitled “Multi-Party E-Negotiations: Agents, Alliances and Negotiation Success,” which explores the concept of a single issue, distributive negotiation performed entirely online and then proceed to reconcile the differences between theory and practice using my experiences in the Virtual Victorian negotiation, which I will discuss later.

Summary

In the article, “Multi-Party E-Negotiations: Agents, Alliances and Negotiation Success,” Kurtzberg, Dunn-Jensen and Matsibekker use a study on a four-person email negotiation about a fictitious house-sale to provide us with a good understanding of the complicated interactions between principals and agents in the online environment. Their fundamental argument is that relationship building devices such as familiarity and similarity help the agent-agent relationship more-so than the principal-agent relationship because of the resemblances in the underlying incentive structures for both agents.

Although previous research has found that either familiarity or similarity can help e-negotiators bridge the distance created by the electronic environment, the authors argue that within this type of four-party e-negotiation both familiarity and similarity will be necessary in conjunction, in order to have an effect on the agents. This, as they point out is because of the competing-loyalty nature of their position, which requires them to carefully manage two sets of relationships – one with their own principal and another with the other agent. The authors had hypothesized that agents would see an increase in positive feelings toward their...