Negotiation | EPFL Graph Search

Negotiation is a dialogue between two or more parties to resolve points of difference, gain an advantage for an individual or collective, or craft outcomes to satisfy various interests. The parties aspire to agree on matters of mutual interest. The agreement can be beneficial for all or some of the parties involved. The negotiators should establish their own needs and wants while also seeking to understand the wants and needs of others involved to increase their chances of closing deals, avoiding conflicts, forming relationships with other parties, or maximizing mutual gains. Distributive negotiations, or compromises, are conducted by putting forward a position and making concessions to achieve an agreement. The degree to which the negotiating parties trust each other to implement the negotiated solution is a major factor in determining the success of a negotiation. People negotiate daily, often without considering it a negotiation. Negotiations may occu

Innovation capacity of the agricultural sector: network of productive interactions, knowledge transfer and differentiation mechanisms

Camille Marguerite Aouinait

Economic growth is increasingly explained and driven by knowledge acquisition and firmsâ capabilities to adapt to new evolving situations to fit economic, societal and environmental frames. Strategic behavior of private companies in differentiating and promoting their products and services is crucial for their competitiveness. In parallel, public research performed at different territorial levels and by a high diversity of actors is a strategic source of key assets adding value to the firms. External actors operate in a non-linear structure allowing frequent feedback and interactive loops in order to optimise the replies to substantial problems and constantly valorise their resources. These features are explored in the thesis through different projects. This dissertation is motivated by international negotiations in the frame of the GATT agreements and bilaterally between the European Union and Switzerland that are going towards the breakdown of borders, threatening the competitiveness of the Swiss agriculture. Negative externalities will affect small firms composing this agricultural network. Thus, the dissertation is focusing on innovation as a strategic asset to maintain the competitiveness and differentiate the domestic agricultural products. The first research project concentrates on interactions occurring in the Swiss apricot network. We investigate the types of interactions producing innovations that come from different sources that are internal or external to the agricultural production supply chain. We use network theory to model the structure of the domain and understand what is inherent to innovation production thanks to collaborations through an empirical work. In the second research project, we examine whether there is a connection between the issues faced by small companies producing food and the innovative solutions and knowledge generated by research institutions. The importance of solutions to daily activities conducted by companies depends on the nature of the sector. Thus, research projects providing outputs like publications might not specifically target these issues. Moreover, access, awareness and affordability of innovations can be hindering factors for small firms composing a low-technology intensive sector. Gaps of knowledge transfer, innovation and implementation are identified in this setting. In the last research project, we address market failures hampering economic and strategic management decisions encountered in the agricultural sector. We empirically construct two case studies highlighting the necessity of intellectual appropriation mechanisms. We explore the use of patents and regional trademark to add value to the emblematic product of a small region. Organisational and marketing innovations have to be supported and diffused by key stakeholders, aiming a good communication based on criteria that take into account diverse interests of those stakeholders; consumers have to be involved in the innovation process. Furthermore, knowledge transfer, innovation generation, diffusion and implementation rely upon the will of stakeholders to take part in an efficient process of interactions and communication in order to produce and perform useful products and services. Practical implications are levered in the projects presented. Finally, digital technologies are efficient for information exchange and can decrease time and transaction costs. These technologies are explored as part of the solution to small firmsâ

EPFL2019

Collaborative design using solution spaces

Claudio Lottaz

Complex design tasks from many domains such as mechanical, electrical and civil engineering make the collaboration of many partners unavoidable for several reasons: knowledge from various experts is necessary, often more than one enterprises are involved and deadlines impose concurrent engineering. However, collaboration also leads to certain in-conveniences such as information loss and misunderstandings during communication and iterative negotiation when suggested partial solutions for sub-tasks conflict. Moreover, major problems are related to management of changes and ensuring design consistency. This thesis conjectures that many of these problems are caused by the use of single solutions during negotiation. Currently, project partners assign single values for sub-tasks and then proceed, often after tedious negotiations with other partners, to integrate these partial solutions into solutions for the whole project. While partners determine one single solution for a sub-task, much information about potential alternatives is lost and premature decisions are taken. The integration of partial solutions then often leads to artificial conflicts which are not due. to incompatible design goals but arise because information about possible compromises is no longer available. Consequently, many changes usually occur during negotiation about parameter values and much, effort must be invested in. order to keep the design consistent. Therefore, we investigate the use of solution spaces instead of single solutions. When solution. spaces are used during negotiation, more information about alternatives is avail-able, premature decisions are avoided and thus, no artificial conflicts arise. Moreover, since project partners provide formal information about project requirements, real conflicts between diverging project goals can be detected. However, the implementation of a collaboration system using solution spaces is far from trivial, since in general the computation of exact solution spaces is intractable. We employ constraint satisfaction techniques in order to calculate solution space approximations. Constraints arise naturally in many fields of engineering and are therefore suited to formally express project requirements. Using constraints on design parameters, project partners can describe large families of acceptable solutions. Moreover, descriptions using constraints can be easily adapted to changes in the project's context. When project descriptions in terms of constraints are available, constraint satisfaction techniques such as consistency can be employed to provide computational support during collaboration. Consistency algorithms use local inconsistencies to prune regions from the original search space where no solution can be expected and thus provide approximations of solution spaces. Algorithms which ensure low degrees of consistency provide a rough over-estimation of the solution space but have low complexity, while algorithms which enforce high degrees of consistency provide a tight estimation of the solution space but suffer from high complexity. Since consistency algorithms provide over-estimations of solution spaces they are suited to find real conflicts between the various project requirements. In fact, using constraint satisfaction techniques in collaboration splits negotiation into two phases: negotiation of project requirements and negotiation about parameter values. During the negotiation of requirements, expressed as constraints, partners search for a feasible set of restrictions. Given such a set of restrictions, partners can negotiate about parameter values within the corresponding solution space approximation. During negotiation about parameter values some support for decision-making can be provided by analysing the shape of the solution space approximations. In order to illustrate the use of constraint satisfaction techniques in collaborative de-sign, a prototype of an Internet-based communication platform has been implemented, which focuses on the exchange of data related to constraints and solution spaces, including the visualisation of constraints and projections of solution space approximation. It provides access to several constraint satisfaction algorithms. Moreover, some standard techniques were extended as follows: A reformulation algorithm transforms algebraic constraint satisfaction problems (CSPs) into ternary form, i.e., such that they contain exclusively constraints involving at most three variables. Thereby, few auxiliary variables are introduced and certain intermediary variables are removed in order to provide a small CSP in ternary form. In addition, the use of interval arithmetic techniques to discretise continuous constraints is proposed. Moreover, variants of 2-consistency and 3-consistency for ternary CSPs have been developed and an improvement of (3,2)-relational consistency's space efficiency. Finally, a description of search heuristics for interactive use is described. The results of this research have been evaluated in the context of the construction industry. Construction projects are suitable test cases for collaboration systems, since they always imply complex interactions between several partners from various domains. With the help of practitioners, three realistic examples have been modelled. These projects demonstrate the usefulness of constraint satisfaction techniques during negotiation and collaboration within design projects. Constraint-based support leads to better management of changes and easier implementation of least commitment decision strategies. The results of this research may therefore improve the performance of collaboration systems currently in use.

EPFL2000

Agreement negotiation support in virtual organisation creation–an illustrative case

Michel Pouly

In the actual market conditions, where it is essential to rapidly respond to business opportunities that might emerge, the concept of virtual organisation (VO) appears particularly well suited. The possibility of rapidly forming a VO to respond to a business or collaboration opportunity gives companies an expression of agility and survival mechanisms in the face of market turbulence. Nevertheless, in the process of VO creation, the negotiation among partners is essential. It is of extreme importance to have an environment where all potential partners can come together and negotiate the necessary topics towards an agreement to regulate the consortium behaviour. Through this environment it should be possible to conduct and manage the VO negotiation process, reach agreements and commitments among partners, enclose necessary documentation, specify partners' rights and duties, etc. To accomplish such environment, a negotiation wizard is proposed. An illustrative scenario of an agreement negotiation in a multicultural context is presented showing the applicability of the wizard.