Using BATNAs and WATNAs in Online Dispute Resolution

Abstract

Abstr act. When contracting through software agents, disputes will inevitably arise. Thus there is an urgent need to find alternatives to litigation for resolving conflicts. Methods of Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) need to be considered to resolve such disputes. Having agents understanding what the dispute is about, managing all interaction between the parties and even formulating proposed solutions is an important innovation. Hence it is of the utmost relevance that the agents may be able to recognise and evaluate the facts, the position of the parties and understand all the relevant data. In many circumstances, risk management and avoidance will be a crucial point to be considered. In this sense we analyze the usefulness of a parallel concept to BATNA-Best Alternative to Negotiated Agreement, that of a WATNA-Worst Alternative to Negotiated Agreement, allowing the software agents to consider the space between BATNA and WATNA as a useful element to be taken into account when making or accepting a proposal. These software agents embodied with intelligent techniques are integrated in an architecture designed to provide support to the ODR in a system we have developed for the resolution of labour disputes-UMCourt. In this context software agents are used to compute and provide the parties with the best and worst alternative to a negotiated agreement.

Developing Dynamic Conflict Resolution Models Based on the Interpretation of Personal Conflict Styles

“…Thus, an informed party should also consider the MLATNA -Most Likely Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement [17]. Following the same line of thought, we can additionally state that the existence of metrics that measure the probability of each possible outcome could also be extremely useful for a party in an attempt to understand how likely each scenario is [22].…”

“…Figure 1 depicts a prototype of this interface. Looking at this representation, the user is able to acknowledge the distance between the BATNA and the WATNA (allowing him/her to assess the risk of his/her decisions), to analyze the maximum and minimum utility and similarity values or analyze the similarity versus the utility [22].…”

Making justice more accessible

“…However, it does not matter so much which is the most likely outcome (which might be hard to estimate, although being possible to introduce metrics in order to measure the probabilities of each outcome), but rather to foresee the real risks that the parties are facing -the extreme value presented by WATNA may well force the parties to change their ideas about their BATNA and ZOPA. Following the same line of thought, we can additionally state that the existence of metrics that measure the probability of each possible outcome could also be extremely useful for a party in an attempt to understand how likely each scenario is [19]. This knowledge can be used not only to correctly inform the parties (as shown in Figure 3) but also to support other functionalities of the conflict resolution platform.…”

Using genetic algorithms to create solutions for conflict resolution

“…This dynamic negotiation or mediation process starts with a phase in which useful knowledge is generated that will be used by the parties and the mediator to build strategies, as depicted in [20]. Afterwards the actual conflict resolution process starts.…”

“…To evaluate this approach we are reusing the UMCourt conflict resolution platform [20,22], by replacing the solution generation module, that was case-based, by the one described in this work [21]. This work is being carried out under the TIARAC project-Telematics and Artificial Intelligence in Alternative Conflict Resolution Project (PTDC/JUR/71354/2006), a research project supported by the Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation.…”