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Nonconsensual Negotiation in Distributed Collaboration

Nonconsensual Negotiation in Distributed Collaboration Roberto Evaristo DISTRIBUTED COLLABORATION Distributed projects are not only more difficult to vations generally support this perspective, with one manage, but also involve problems never considered interesting and provocative exception. Initially, facefor traditional methodologies on single-site projects. to-face communication was appropriate to establish The collaboration project described here involves trust and proposal focus. Later, the written version the development and writing of a multipartner was appropriate to clarify detailed focus and deliverEuropean Union grant proposal. ables. However, it was also used as a tool for nonconThe scope of the proposal was initially agreed upon sensual negotiation. Since negotiations are typically by most partners in a brief face-to-face meeting. The conducted in richer media, this exception suggests Ubiquitous computing weeks only influencing our ramifications for overall proposal skeleton was prepared three is notthat managers must be aware of itslives, later by three key stakeholders in a two-day in-person distributedcareer choices and paths but our livelihoods. Indeed, traditional collaboration projects. Richer media was meeting and later shared with all partners. The full eventually required to agree on departures from the will require fundamental attitude adjustments. proposal was developed in the following four weeks, course originally selected. A transatlantic, transpacific when many of the stakeholders were traveling world- phone negotiation was called and yielded a focused wide. One of the partners, Themios Theklies (all proposal eliminating nonrelated deliverables equinames used here are pseudonyms), noticed the format tably for all partners. It seems the original concept of the document should be changed to reflect the meant different things to different people, with little needs of the EU-issued RFP. In the process, he edited shared understanding of expectations. Partial clarificathe text extensively, changing the original focus and tion of the underlying assumptions was only possible proposed deliverables to those more aligned with his through different written versions and as a direct own agenda ”all without the agreement or knowl- result of nonconsensual negotiation. edge of the rest of the team. This created a problem: This fits well with certain knowledge management How to reconcile the original text with Theklies ™ de approaches, particularly by making implicit knowlfacto posted new requests? edge explicit. The recommendation is the concept of Peter Petroli (academic co-coordinator) prepared a emerging meaning must be acceptable up-front with new version including Theklies ™ requests and reinstat- implicit negotiation becoming more visible. As part of ing the earlier set of deliverables. A pattern emerged this requirement, it is fundamental to recognize the in which one partner would change something to existence of nonconsensual negotiation and resulting reflect his or her own interest and amend the rest to appropriate media choices. c reach some level of consistency with the previous versions, keeping all changes to the previous partners ™ agenda to a minimum. In practice, multiple sets of Roberto Evaristo (evaristo@uic.edu) is an assistant professor at agendae were beginning to be reflected in one single the University of Illinois, Chicago, Ill. document. An interesting insight was how much of Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed the negotiation proceeded without formal recognition for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citathe first page. To copy otherwise, to republish, post that negotiation was indeed happening. This phe- tion on to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or to fee. on servers or to redistribute a nomenon was labeled œnonconsensual negotiation.  The task-media fit perspective suggests the media most appropriate to a given task is used. Our obser- © 2001 ACM 0002-0782/01/1200 $5.00 COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM December 2001/Vol. 44, No. 12 NONCONSENSUAL NEGOTIATION IN http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Communications of the ACM Association for Computing Machinery

Nonconsensual Negotiation in Distributed Collaboration

Communications of the ACM , Volume 44 (12) – Dec 1, 2001

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Publisher
Association for Computing Machinery
Copyright
Copyright © 2001 by ACM Inc.
ISSN
0001-0782
DOI
10.1145/501317.501355
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Roberto Evaristo DISTRIBUTED COLLABORATION Distributed projects are not only more difficult to vations generally support this perspective, with one manage, but also involve problems never considered interesting and provocative exception. Initially, facefor traditional methodologies on single-site projects. to-face communication was appropriate to establish The collaboration project described here involves trust and proposal focus. Later, the written version the development and writing of a multipartner was appropriate to clarify detailed focus and deliverEuropean Union grant proposal. ables. However, it was also used as a tool for nonconThe scope of the proposal was initially agreed upon sensual negotiation. Since negotiations are typically by most partners in a brief face-to-face meeting. The conducted in richer media, this exception suggests Ubiquitous computing weeks only influencing our ramifications for overall proposal skeleton was prepared three is notthat managers must be aware of itslives, later by three key stakeholders in a two-day in-person distributedcareer choices and paths but our livelihoods. Indeed, traditional collaboration projects. Richer media was meeting and later shared with all partners. The full eventually required to agree on departures from the will require fundamental attitude adjustments. proposal was developed in the following four weeks, course originally selected. A transatlantic, transpacific when many of the stakeholders were traveling world- phone negotiation was called and yielded a focused wide. One of the partners, Themios Theklies (all proposal eliminating nonrelated deliverables equinames used here are pseudonyms), noticed the format tably for all partners. It seems the original concept of the document should be changed to reflect the meant different things to different people, with little needs of the EU-issued RFP. In the process, he edited shared understanding of expectations. Partial clarificathe text extensively, changing the original focus and tion of the underlying assumptions was only possible proposed deliverables to those more aligned with his through different written versions and as a direct own agenda ”all without the agreement or knowl- result of nonconsensual negotiation. edge of the rest of the team. This created a problem: This fits well with certain knowledge management How to reconcile the original text with Theklies ™ de approaches, particularly by making implicit knowlfacto posted new requests? edge explicit. The recommendation is the concept of Peter Petroli (academic co-coordinator) prepared a emerging meaning must be acceptable up-front with new version including Theklies ™ requests and reinstat- implicit negotiation becoming more visible. As part of ing the earlier set of deliverables. A pattern emerged this requirement, it is fundamental to recognize the in which one partner would change something to existence of nonconsensual negotiation and resulting reflect his or her own interest and amend the rest to appropriate media choices. c reach some level of consistency with the previous versions, keeping all changes to the previous partners ™ agenda to a minimum. In practice, multiple sets of Roberto Evaristo (evaristo@uic.edu) is an assistant professor at agendae were beginning to be reflected in one single the University of Illinois, Chicago, Ill. document. An interesting insight was how much of Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed the negotiation proceeded without formal recognition for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citathe first page. To copy otherwise, to republish, post that negotiation was indeed happening. This phe- tion on to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or to fee. on servers or to redistribute a nomenon was labeled œnonconsensual negotiation.  The task-media fit perspective suggests the media most appropriate to a given task is used. Our obser- © 2001 ACM 0002-0782/01/1200 $5.00 COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM December 2001/Vol. 44, No. 12 NONCONSENSUAL NEGOTIATION IN

Journal

Communications of the ACMAssociation for Computing Machinery

Published: Dec 1, 2001

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