Introduction to Decision, Negotiation, Leadership, Social Communities, and Technology Minitrack

From a systems perspective, leadership can be viewed as a complex process leading to a negotiation agreement constituting a common ground for involved participants. This process implies the need of using technologies to support connectedness leading to negotiated outcomes, in addition to centralized and decentralized data and models. As Joseph Nye states in his 2010 book on "The Power to Lead", "leaders as those who help the group create and achieved shared goals,"(p. XI) leadership is an integral part of effective group decision and negotiation (GDN) processes. Recognition of this bridge between the GDN and leadership areas allows us to bring to functioning leadership the technology available to support GDN processes. Also, the concept of connectedness has now become pervasive in social generations that are transforming the way organizations work and serve their customers and stakeholders.The newly redesigned HICSS-48 minitrack will continue to support research related to the role of NSS in a Web-centric platform and with applications in electronic markets, e-auctions and automated negotiation agents, and in social computing platforms. More particularly, we would like to expand this minitrack to explore research issues related to the concept, design, implementation, use and evaluation of technologies that involve decision-making, negotiation, leadership and social engagement in business. Since 1991, this minitrack has gathered a respectable collection of papers in this young but promising area of research. Collectively, the selected papers in this minitrack continue to offer innovative and thought-provoking research in computer-supported mediation, now embedded in a social context.