Introduction to the Special Issue: International Perspectives in Group Decision & Negotiation Research

摘要

Research in Group Decision & Negotiation (GDN) is thriving like never before. Major conferences, such as the INFORMS Group Decision & Negotiation conference and the IEEE Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, show an active community of researchers engaging in research from multiple perspectives. GDN researchers focus on systems, processes, methods, behaviors, and theories concerning the way in which individuals and groups negotiate and collaborate. The theme of this special issue concerns international perspectives on GDN research and comprises a number of papers reflecting the different types of GDN research that is carried out around the globe. These papers were selected from the INFORMS GDN 2003 Conference in Istanbul, Turkey through two rounds of blind refereeing (both pre-conference and post-conference). The first paper by Agres, de Vreede, and Briggs addresses a phenomenon that has puzzled Group Support Systems (GSS) researchers: the slow transition and abandonment of GSS in the workplace. Through a case study of GSS transition in two organizations, the authors test the Technology Transition Model (TTM) as a way to explain why in some organizations self-sustaining and growing communities of GSS users emerge and in some organizations they do not. The insights from the case study suggest that TTM is indeed a useful model to study the transition of collaboration technologies in organizations.