Fuzzy Logic to Identify Significant Factors of Negotiation Performance

Many social and business interactions involve negotiation, in which participants may cooperate to achieve a mutually beneficial outcome that serves both parties, or compete to get the best deal for a party over the other. Within this context, negotiation can be defined as the process whereby two or more parties attempt to settle what each shall give and take, or perform and receive, in a transaction between them. Negotiation is one of the most important activities that managers do on a daily basis. It is estimated to consume about 50% of their time. Even with such lengthy consumption of time and effort, negotiation failure rate is reported to be high. Negotiation and business deal closure are focused on either decision making style or the approaches and tactics used by negotiators. It has revealed that the real world consists of multidimensional factors with mass influences, where cause and effect are imprecise. This study presents a methodology with a multidimensional model, and a fuzzy rule- based decision support system that assists Malaysian's business decision makers to understand and identify factors affecting the business deal closure with their Middle East counterparts