A central aspect of cooperative problem solving by groups is the avoidance,
detection and resolution of conflicts among the participants. This is of
great theoretical interest in such research areas as distributed artificial
intelligence. It is also of considerable practical importance because of
the key role conflict management plays in cooperative problem solving e.g.
in concurrent engineering. Work on conflict management has occurred in a
variety of settings including concurrent engineering, multi-agent planning
& design, AI and Law, distributed AI (including game theory), GDSS (group
decision support systems), CSCW (computer-supported cooperative work),
software engineering, sociology, organizational science, public policy and
international relations. This work thus includes theoretical groundwork,
empirical studies and implemented conflict management systems for human and
computational agents. Despite wide-spread interest, however, there have
been few opportunities for researchers addressing these issues in different
areas to explore commonalities and benefit from the differing insights each
have achieved. The goal of this workshop is to facilitate this kind of
cross-fertilization process.
The workshop will focus on several key themes:
* What lessons do empirical studies of conflict management have to offer
for the development of computational models?
* What are the current theoretical underpinnings for conflict management,
and how can they be applied to practical problems?
* How can computers support group conflict management with both human and
computational participants? What are the benefits and challenges of the
different approaches?
* What aspects of conflict management are generic and what are
domain-specific? Can the same techniques work with human and computational
participants?
* How do computational models of conflict management fare in real-world
social and organisational settings?
Through exploring such themes it is hoped the participants will have a
better idea about how they can use related work from other areas, and can
begin to outline a single general theory of conflict management that works
across multiple domains.
Workshop Information
--------------------
This full day workshop is part of the Workshop Program for IJCAI-93 (the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence) and will be held in Chambery, France on Monday, August 30, 1993.
The workshop will consist of four moderated 75 minute sessions, each made
up of:
* a brief (5-10 minute) moderators' overview of common themes and key
issues
* four 10 minute presentations (including questions): presenters will be
asked to follow a results-oriented format and to address key issues
identified by the moderators.
* a discussion panel wherein presenters field questions from the audience
and each other. This should be focused on shared issues rather than further
explanation of the participant's individual work.
Workshop participants will also be invited to display posters describing
their work.
Please note that each attendee must have registered for the main conference
and is required to pay an additional 300 FF (about $60 US) fee for the
workshop. IJCAI has offered to exempt the workshop fee for one student
attendee if he or she agrees to be in charge of taking notes for the whole
day. Please let me know if you are interested.
Submissions
-----------
Participation is by invitation only, and will be limited to approximately
35 people of which 16 will be presenters. Those who wish to attend the
workshop should submit four copies of a research abstract no more than 5
pages long focusing on the main contribution of their work in preference to
general introductory material, literature review etc. All submissions will
be reviewed by researchers working in a related area. Please include a
brief abstract, the author's electronic and physical address information,
and indicate if you would like to display a poster on your work at the
workshop. Electronic submissions will be accepted only if they are in pure
ascii or binhexed Macintosh Word/MacWrite format.
Submission deadline: March 1, 1993
Notification date: April 1, 1993
Final date for revised papers: June 1, 1993
We expect that revised versions of the best papers from the workshop will
be considered for inclusion in an appropriate journal or published
collection.
Submissions and questions regarding the workshop should be directed to:
