This book is the first to bring together research material from different communities, Computer Science and especially Artificial Intelligence, and Social Sciences, e.g. Anthropology, Social Psychology, Political Science that present ideas and viewpoints, methods and models on inter-cultural collaboration and negotiation. With increasing globalization of business and science, cultural differences of the parties are an important factor that affects the process and outcomes of collaborative and self-interested interactions. The social science literature on culture as well as human collaboration and negotiation is vast. Most of this literature is devoted to work within the same culture. Artificial intelligence researchers, on the other hand, have developed computational models of cooperation, conflict resolution and negotiation, but paying almost no attention to identifying and modeling cultural factors. In recent years, we have witnessed a great increase in interest in understanding inter-cultural interactions. This has led to increased interest of social scientists and computational scientists in theoretical and experimental analysis of inter-cultural exchanges, modeling and support. Currently, these communities are largely unconnected. There is a great need to bring them together to share research work and experiences, discuss ideas and forge interdisciplinary collaborative relations. This book will be of interest to researchers from AI/computer science and social/behavioral sciences fields, such as psychology, sociology, communications, organizational science.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Group Decision and Negotiation, GDN 2017, held in Stuttgart, Germany, in August 2017. The field of Group Decision and Negotiation focuses on decision processes with at least two participants and a common goal but conflicting individual goals. Research areas of Group Decision and Negotiation include electronic negotiations, experiments, the role of emotions in group decision and negotiations, preference elicitation and decision support for group decisions and negotiations, and conflict resolution principles. The 14 full papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 87 submissions. They were organized in topical sections named: general topics in group decision and negotiation; conflict resolution; emotions in group decision and negotiation; negotiation support systems and studies; and preference modeling for group decision and negotiation. The book also contains two invited talks in full paper length.

This book studies three interrelated frontiers in civil justice from European and national perspectives, combining theory with policy and insights from practice: the interplay between private and public justice, the digitisation of justice, and litigation funding. These current topics are viewed against the backdrop of the requirements of effective access to justice and the overall goal of establishing a sustainable civil justice system in Europe.

Agent technology has generated lots of excitement in the past decade. Currently, multi-agent systems (MAS) composed of autonomous agents representing individuals or organizations and capable of reaching mutually beneficial agreements through negotiation and argumentation are becoming increasingly important and pervasive. Research on both automated negotiation and argumentation in MAS has a vigorous, exciting tradition. However, efforts to integrate both areas have received only selective attention in the academia and the practitioner literature. A symbiotic relationship could significantly strengthen each area’s progress and trigger new R&D challenges and prospects toward the advancement of automated negotiators and argumentation tools. Negotiation and Argumentation in Multi-Agent Systems presents the current state-of-the-art on the theory and practice of automated negotiation and argumentation in MAS. The eBook encourages the interaction between these two areas in data modelling and attempts to converge them toward mutual enhancement and synergism. Equally, the monograph brings together researchers and industry practitioners specialized in these areas to share R&D results and discuss existing and emerging theoretical and applied problems. This book is intended as a textbook for graduate courses and a reference book for researchers, advanced-level students in Computers Science, and IT practitioners.

Providing a comprehensive overview of the key theories and concepts that have guided the field of negotiation for several decades, Leigh Thompson and Cynthia Wang demonstrate how collaborative multi-disciplinary research has enriched the study of negotiation.

Publication of the Handbook of Group Decision and Negotiation marks a milestone in the evolution of the group decision and negotiation (GDN) eld. On this occasion, editors Colin Eden and Marc Kilgour asked me to write a brief history of the eld to provide background and context for the volume. They said that I am in a good position to do so: Actively involved in creating the GDN Section and serving as its chair; founding and leading the GDN journal, Group Decision and Negotiation as editor-in-chief, and the book series, “Advances in Group Decision and Negotiation” as editor; and serving as general chair of the GDN annual meetings. I accepted their invitation to write a brief history. In 1989 what is now the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) established its Section on Group Decision and Negotiation. The journal Group Decision and Negotiation was founded in 1992, published by Springer in cooperation with INFORMS and the GDN Section. In 2003, as an ext- sion of the journal, the Springer book series, “Advances in Group Decision and Negotiation” was inaugurated.