Introduction

This issue of Negotiation Journal is dedicated to the theme of artificial intelligence, technology, and negotiation. It arose from a Program on Negotiation (PON) working conference on that important topic held virtually on May 17–18. The conference was not the first time that PON ventured into these waters—in 1994, PON hosted a conference on computers and negotiation that generated several papers for the Journal’s April 1995 issue. Also, in the April 1995 issue, David Sanders and Roy Lewicki wrote enthusiastically about the prospects for using computer‐based simulations in the classroom. Richard Shell’s piece described an innovative program he developed with Arvand Rangaswamy. It used conjoint analysis to calculate implicit, conditional trade‐offs among a set of issues. When job hunting, for example, you might set a higher minimum salary for working in a more expensive or less attractive city. There is still valuable work to be done in this realm.
Technology has evolved dramatically since the 1990s, changing the way we work, study, create, socialize, and shop, in perhaps unexpected ways. A recent Consumer Reports survey of 60,000 readers reported that they were more likely to bargain when they purchased online rather than shop in brick and mortar stores (Befute 2018). Some large companies now use automated bots to do the first round of interviews for job applicants (Moran 2018). As for researchers, with big data getting ever bigger, there is a growing trove of real‐world information to be mined. Exhibit A: One study of a half a million sales calls revealed that the top performers at closing deals asked prospects considerably more questions than did their less inquisitive colleagues (Brooks and John 2018). Then there’s Exhibit B: In another study a researcher found that people who are nice and polite on platforms like eBay tend to get worse results (Jeong et al. 2019).
There’s also the growing library of apps designed for classroom use. Some are analytically oriented while others enable the students to polish their interpersonal skills. Mursion, a California company, has developed virtual reality simulations to polish interpersonal skills often vital for negotiation success (see https://www.mursion.com/). Online negotiation courses have blossomed, especially after the COVID‐19 crisis.