Design and implementation of Collective Bargaining Support System (CBSS- a Web-based negotiation support system

Abstract

<p>Negotiation is an important part of the life in many organizations. Many works have been undertaken to build tools for conducting negotiations, such as theoretical models and computerized support systems. Some of the existing computerized support systems provide suggestions and solution alternatives to the users. Other systems support the negotiation process, including: support for communications, structuring the process, and managing the documentation. The advent of the World Wide Web as widely available networking platform, the Client/Server as a computing architecture, and Java language as a programming language for the Web, creates new and promising ways to conduct negotiations as an alternative if face-to-face negotiations are not possible. This article describes the design, implementation, and validation of a computerized process support for negotiation, a Web-based Collective Bargaining Support System (CBSS). This system is implemented on Microsoft's Windows 95 environment, written in Java (Sun's JAVA SDK version 1.0), and accessed through the Web. Simulated union-management contract negotiations were conducted in an experiment to test the validity of CBSS as a negotiation stool, and to investigate the effectiveness and the efficiency of this negotiation support system. The data analysis (of questionnaires distributed during the experiment) shows that CBSS is a valid alternative, both when face-to-face negotiation is not possible and when it is combined with face-to-face negotiations. It is also concluded from the experiment that, although CBSS is perceived to be slower than face-to-face negotiation, it is an effective tool for negotiators, and it does not negatively affect bargaining outcomes.</p>