ABSTRACT
Today’s global economic environment requires that organizations operate across geographic, national, and cultural boundaries. The resulting distributed work environments exacerbate the already difficult process of negotiation and consensus building and necessitate the use of electronic negotiation tools that facilitate the negotiation process. Electronic negotiation tools are computationally based software applications that link a diverse set of users and allow them to engage in complicated negotiation tasks.
Although sufficient for basic consensus building and negotiations, today’s tools neither exploit the opportunities afforded by the increasing availability of high performance computing nor adequately address the organizational challenges presented by a global economy that is increasingly interconnected, time sensitive and digitally dependent. As we move toward the year 2025, the dynamic global environment necessitates the use of more sophisticated electronic negotiation tools where users are able to virtually engage and make use of advanced computing capabilities. This chapter explores the role of a synthetic world for virtual negotiation and consensus building through the scenario of Black Gold, a Texas-based international oil conglomerate negotiation of its Nigerian oil production schedule in the year 2025.
