Department of Management Science, Strathclyde University, Glasgow, G1 1QE, Scotland ... Faculty of Technology Policy and Management, Delft University of ...
INTRODUCTION
Group Decision and Negotiation 11: 65–67, 2002 65 © 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands
Introduction to the Special Issue on Group Decision and Negotiation 2001 FRAN ACKERMANN Department of Management Science, Strathclyde University, Glasgow, G1 1QE, Scotland
GERT-JAN DE VREEDE Faculty of Technology Policy and Management, Delft University of Technology, PO Box 5015, 2600 GA Delft, The Netherlands
Following on from the highly successful conference in June 2000 (Glasgow Scotland), June 2001 once again saw researchers from around the world come together in La Rochelle to discuss and debate Group Decision and Negotiation support (and of course try the wonderful cognac that the area is famous for). The conference included over 40 papers/presentations and was attended by around 60 participants. As with the previous year’s conference this meeting brought together researchers from the US, Europe, and Australasia, reflecting the broad research interest and activity in the field. Also, participants represented the two working groups affiliated with the conference: INFORMS and EuroGDSS. As evidenced from the conference’s attendance the field of GDN is still very strong and growing in the areas of enquiry and development. Areas of GDN considered during the conference included papers dealing with issues relating to Negotiation (using GDSSs and managing conflict), Group Decision Support Systems/Group Support Systems (addressing aspects such as field experiences, applications, foundations, collaborative engineering and virtual working) and finally specific methods (for example, cognitive mapping, decision conferencing, and stakeholder analysis and management). Consequently, to produce this special issue and reduce the contributions to the six papers included within this issue meant a lot of hard decisions were necessary. Those authors who wished to submit their paper for the issue underwent two rounds of blind refereeing (both pre conference and post conference) and have as a result, in our opinion, produced some wonderful papers. The special issue begins with a paper by Nunamaker, Romano, and Briggs and deals with the concept of Intellectual Bandwidth. In this paper the authors look at how the effective use of knowledge can be achieved through breaking down and utilizing external information. To achieve this, they discuss methods using Intellectual Bandwidth to transform external knowledge into firstly Intellectual Capital (IC) and then Applied Knowledge (AK). It is this Applied Knowledge that organisational teams use to help them in their decision-making. In their paper, the authors consider issues such as the growing amount of information facing managers and present an interesting discussion mapping data, information, knowledge, and wisdom against the dimensions of understanding and connectedness (context).
66
ACKERMANN AND DE VREEDE
It also considers the significant change required in organisations if there is to be a change in sharing of information and details a ‘collaborative capability hierarchy’, which sets out different steps for organisations to climb. The next paper by Dasgupta, Granger, and McGarry examines user acceptance of ecollaboration technology in the context of technology-supported learning. They use the wellestablished TAM model (Davis 1989). The authors explore student perceptions of electronic collaboration technology. Through this examination, the authors consider the nature of ecollaboration reflecting on areas such as purposes (e.g., email, conferencing etc.), and modes (synchronous or asynchronous). In particular they look at how ease of use impacts system usage (through perceived usefulness) and consider the difference between the ability of users (novice versus advanced). Findings include a belief that (a) the TAM model works well in a distributed/web area, (b) perceived ease of use has a positive impact on perceived usefulness of a system, and (c) that whilst the ability to be experienced with the system helps in the accessing of information, it does not appear to improve performance. Building on the asynchronous mode, the next paper examines Group Support Systems and virtual collaboration. The authors report on their experiences in Hong Kong and the Netherlands. Rutkowski, van Genuchten, and Bemelmans from the Netherlands and Vogel from Hong Kong explore how Group Support Systems can support remote teams of multicultural groups collaborating to solve problems. The research that took place over three years and involved 178 students presented the researchers with a large number of lessons of which a number are presented in this paper. Through the use of Hofstede’s (1991) four dimensions interesting insights were gained into cross cultural group working, complemented with issues dealing with Guanxi (Bond 1986) and Interdependence (Rijsman 1997). The students developed new shared meaning, and managed to agree on items external to their cultural tendencies. The paper offers useful insights for those organisations spanning countries and cultures. Before moving onto the negotiation papers, and providing a useful natural link, the paper by de Vreede, Niederman, and Paarlberg considers participants’ perceptions on facilitation in group support meetings and develops a instrument to measure them. The paper builds upon the work to date on facilitation in GSS (facilitation being seen as a key, if not core component of successful group working), taking the perspective of the participant rather than, as is more traditionally encountered, the researcher or facilitators. On analysing the questionnaires (used to measure the participants’ perceptions) the researchers found that potentially there were three categories of facilitation tasks that are considered important to ensure the effective facilitation of the meeting process (rather than the six initially envisaged). The research, which was based on real groups, reveals that there are many more subtle links between meeting elements and facilitator practice than have been hitherto noted. Continuing to build on the theme of virtual working but moving more towards the area of negotiation, Appelman, Rouwette, and Qureshi present a paper on the dynamics of negotiation in a global inter-organizational network. Through examining the negotiations held between airlines and travel agencies in reviewing a principle/agent relationship, the paper reveals some interesting insights into areas such as facilitation and the dynamics of nego-
INTRODUCTION
67
tiation. It concludes with the reflection that even with today’s technologically supported groups, working behaviours are still problematic. The paper in particular deals with the issues relating to power and politics, as the research vehicle adopted was that of Action Research, with the researchers combining Group Support Systems and group model building (using the system dynamics modelling technique) to help participants understand one another’s perspectives and work together towards a sustainable outcome. The paper provides would-be facilitators with a useful set of assumptions when considering negotiation meetings. The final paper by Ströbel and Stolze examines a matchmaking component for the discovery of agreement and negotiation spaces in electronic markets. The authors introduce an extended matchmaking system that examines transactions between buyers and sellers and aids users by searching for areas of possible negotiation. This is achieved through exploring the different constraints that exist and suggesting possible areas for consideration. Building on previous work in the area of electronic negotiations the system aims to act as a mediation service increasing the chance of a successful outcome. In closing, we would like to thank the reviewers for their time and care in helping us to put together this special issue, Mel Shakun for agreeing to publish the papers in a special issue of Group Decision and Negotiation, and all of those who attended the conference in June at La Rochelle. Last but certainly not least, we wish to thank Alain Checroun for making the conference attendees’ visit to La Rochelle a more than memorable one. We hope we will see many of you in the conferences to come.
References Bond, M. H. (1986). The Psychology of Chinese People. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press. Davis, F. D. (1989). “Perceived Usefulness, Perceived Ease of Use and User Acceptance of Information Technology,” MIS Quarterly 13(3), 319–339. Hofstede, G. (1991). Cultures and Organisations: Software of Mind. Berkshire, England: McGraw-Hill Book Company. Rijsman, J. B. (1997). “Social Diversity: A Social Psychological Analysis and Some Implications for Groups and Organizations,” European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology 6(2), 139–152.
68
ACKERMANN AND DE VREEDE
