A Negotiation Approach to Support the Strategies Alignment Process in Collaborative Networks

Abstract

This paper proposes a negotiation approach to support the strategies alignment (SA) collaborative process. The negotiation approach is presented as a complementary mechanism to deal with the SA process. The strategies alignment negotiation approach (SA-NA) considers three different levels of collaboration, which differ by the accurateness of information and amount of data exchanged among the collaborative enterprises. Accordingly, three negotiation processes are proposed, equivalent to the three collaboration levels identified. This paper describes from a conceptual and mathematical point of views the phases of the SA-NA to carry out at each collaboration level. The SA-NA enables users to identify aligned strategies to be activated by the collaborative network (CN) partners. The main aim of the SA-NA is to identify those aligned strategies that satisfy all the CN enterprises, allowing users to achieve the objectives and performance levels required at the enterprises’ level while the network performance is maximized. The SA-NA enables CN partners to negotiate and achieve a suitable solution for all the CN enterprises, promoting sustainable collaboration among the partners participating in the CN through the activation of aligned strategies.