The Medium as an Innovation in International Negotiation: An Introduction

Abstract

This issue of International Negotiation addresses a new research perspective on cross-cultural and international negotiation processes – the effects of innovation. This research examines the process of negotiation in terms of the elemental human decision-making and communication acts that are mediated by, and/or supported with, information and computer technologies (ICTs). Electronic media are used by negotiators to communicate among themselves and with the computer systems. Support tools and aids are used, among others, in structuring and analyzing the negotiation problem, eliciting negotiator preferences, constructing their utility functions, visualizing the negotiation process, and assessing offers and counter-offers. The initial impetus for this issue was a special session on technology at the International Association for Conflict Management (IACM) Conference in 2001, Towards a dialogue between conflict theories and practices across paradigms and cultures, organized by the Institute for Research and Education on Negotiation in Europe (IRENE) of the ESSEC Business School (Paris). Papers presented there, including a study on dyadic influence in organizations through computer-mediated channels (Barry and Fulmer, 2001), provided an up-todate social-cognitive framework, supplementing an earlier synthetic study by Bordia (1996).