Preference Ordering in Agenda Based Multi-issue Negotiation for Service Level Agreement

This paper discusses multi-issue negotiation between agents such as providers and consumers in a group decision making environment. The outcome of such encounters depends on two key factors: the agenda (the set of issues associated with the service) and the negotiation procedure (how to settle the issues). In a multiple-issue negotiation process it is difficult to reach an optimal outcome when the two agents´ preferences and the relative importance of the issues to them are not known to each other. This paper investigates the multi-issue decision making problem where preference information on issues associated with services are expressed in different formats by the consumers. A fuzzy preference concept is used to order the issues in the pre-negotiation stage to improve the efficiency of the outcome. Finally we propose an approach where the preference ordering is used in an agenda based multi-issue negotiation process for service level agreement.