COMPROMISE REACHING MECHANISMS IN MULTI-GROUP/MULTI-PLAYER NEGOTIATION PROCESSES

Abstract

We consider a situation in which multiple decision-makers who are partitioned into two or more distinct groups are asked to recommend a uniform course of action which is drawn from a finite and explicit set of potential alternatives. We present group-level and player-level mechanisms to reach a compromise decision under such circumstances. The group-level mechanism is based on the Dempster-Shafer theory of evidence; The player-level mechanism employs a set-product operation that aggregates the individual decisions over a certain space of committees. Previous research established that the two mechanisms are isomorphic, which, in the contest of the present paper, implies that they yield the same compromise decision. However, unlike the Dempster-Shafer theory, which was criticized for lack of external validity, the set-product mechanism has plausible properties in the contest of group decision making. With that in mind, the paper seeks to (i) report about an interesting relationship between group decision research and AI methods to manage uncertainty, and (ii) build a foundation for an inter-disciplinary research that exploits this linkage.