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behavioral approaches mainly focus on conflict resolution itself rather than its origin
and influence in the whole process of engineering design. However, as the design
process is being conducted and the design environment evolving, it is difficult to
use one category of methods to deal with all of the conflicts [Kilker 1999]. Most of
them assume that design stakeholders are purely reasonable and their preferences
can be represented by utility functions. However, utility theory has intrinsic limita-
tions on conlict resolution and collaboration support [Binmore 1987]. he critical
reason is that in collaborative design, the meanings and concepts are defined during
the interaction rather than before the interaction. Many conflicts are actually caused
by the different objectives and competing perspectives of stakeholders. Only after
these objectives and perspectives are identified and shared among the stakeholders,
can utility theory take effect to handle conflict. Conflict resolution is highly coupled
with the technical decisions and social interaction. For example, although game
theory provides quite complicated methodologies to solve the conflict problems in
economics, the use of them in engineering design requires a deep understanding
of the nature of design decision making (e.g., collaborative negotiation) in order to
adapt the game-playing models. he rightness of the analysis (e.g., build utility func-
tions and determine the strategies of players) depends on the comprehension of the
attributes of design participants, the design tasks, and the design situation.
he other deficiency of these approaches is that they mainly can contribute to
how to resolve the conflicts after they show up, rather than identify the source of
these conflicts and prevent them from happening, which is actually a very effective
way for conflict resolution. Using the engineering design models to resolve conflict
is a prospective approach to solve the problem. But most of the current design
models do not take supporting collaborative design as one of their primary goals.
hey assume that strictly following their guidelines will significantly reduce the
chance of conflict. Overall, all works mentioned above suggest conflict detection
mechanisms, define conflict resolution strategies, and provide support to manage
the negotiation between different actors involved in the conflict. However, none of
them identifies the objectives and analyses the perspectives of involved stakeholders
leading to recognizing the source of conflicts, resolving these conflicts with more
focused and operational strategy, and preventing them from happening again. his
objective identification and perspective analysis is a critical phase for conflict reso-
lution since conflicts originate from different objectives and competing perspec-
tives. How to effectively handle this phase by structuring stakeholders' negotiation
arguments with this information is still a critical challenge in supporting group
decisions and conflict resolution in engineering design.
8.2.3 Collaborative Negotiation in Engineering
As mentioned earlier, though extensive research has been done in the field of nego-
tiation, various limitations exist. Most of the existing practices have not specified a
practical means to identify and organize objectives and perspectives among multiple
