Suchergebnisse

One of the standard assumptions in auction theory is that preferences can be represented with quasilinear utility. This assumption is of particular significance in reverse auctions, which are used in procurement. This paper presents an analysis of quasilinear utilities and their implications. Building on observations of scholars in economics and decision sciences, who note that quasilinear preferences may be rare in practice, the paper shows that in the procurement of goods and services, price is often interrelated with costs. When preferences can be represented with convex or concave utilities, the alternatives in which the buyer's surplus is maximized are different from those that maximize social welfare. The result is that reverse auctions may cause a significant loss of social welfare, which is of particular significance for public organizations. The analysis of concave efficient frontiers in the utility space shows that it is possible to determine deals that yield greater social welfare than the winning bids. If the winning seller is willing to share the increase in utility with the buyer who faces a loss, then these alternatives can produce, for both the buyer and the seller, utility values that are higher than the utility values produced by the winning bid.

Abstracte‐Democracy takes place at different levels, ranging from local to regional to state governments. It also takes different forms: voting, consultation and the participation in the construction of the alternative course of actions. This paper is concerned with the use of information and communication technologies in participative e‐democracy at community and local government levels. It postulates that to design participating systems the needs of the potential users must be determined and models of decision‐making and conflict resolution that can be used by lay people need to be constructed. A general framework for the design of systems for participatory decision‐making is presented. The experiences with the design and deployment of the Inspire e‐negotiation support system, its use by a large number of people from many countries, and the results of studies of the users and the use of Inspire are presented. Based on these experiences, an example of the implementation of the general framework is given. The paper also stresses the need for the development of aids and materials for lay people who wish to educate themselves in participating in e‐democratic processes. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

AbstractIn this article, we apply an extended technology acceptance model (TAM) to explore whether national culture influences a user's perception and use of Internet-based negotiation support systems (NSS). In particular, we are interested in whether different preferences for communication patterns, as we find them for low-context and high-context cultures, influence the use and perception of different NSS support tools. The Web-based system Inspire, which provided data for our analysis has been used by over 2000 entities worldwide in experimental negotiations. Our results show that, based on the need to establish a social context in computermediated negotiations, users from high-context cultures exchange significantly more messages and offers during negotiations than users from low-context cultures. Analytical negotiation support is valued significantly higher by users from low-context cultures than by users from highcontext cultures as this problem-solving approach is more compatible with their preference for direct and task-oriented communication.