The Application of UTA Method for Support Evaluation Negotiation Offers

Abstract

The MCDA technique has been extensively and successfully applied for supporting decision making in negotiation processes. The mostly used techniques SAW, AHP or TOPSIS are based on direct preference information which requires from negotiator a clear and precise definition all the parameters of the preference model (e.g. issue weights, option rates, aspiration and reservation values etc.), so those techniques can be successfully applied in well-structured negotiation problems. But, many real negotiation problems are illstructured, that means that the negotiation space is imprecisely defined, and the negotiator’s preferences the vagueness or imperfect. The main purpose of this paper is to investigate the potentials and the applicability the UTA method, one of the techniques based on indirect preference information, in evaluation of negotiation offers, especially in ill-structured negotiation problems. The UTA (Jacquet-Lagreze and Siskos, 1978, 1982, 2001) is a multicriteria decision making method which is based on the linear programming model for inferring additive utility functions from a set of representative decision data. The example is also presented to elaborate and demonstrate the holistic judgment and the usefulness UTA approach for evaluation negotiation offers.