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A Model of Culture in Trading Agents

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Models for Intercultural Collaboration and Negotiation

Part of the book series: Advances in Group Decision and Negotiation ((AGDN,volume 6))

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Abstract

Geert Hofstede’s five-dimensional framework is widely used in social sciences and management science to characterize cultures. It has been suggested to build culturally consistent agent characters based on his framework. This chapter stresses the relevance of culture and trust for trade, substantiates why a dimensional model offers a good basis for cultural differentiation of agents, and presents an approach to apply Hofstede’s model to develop culturally differentiated agents. The approach is based on knowledge acquisition on a dimension-by-dimension basis and a computational method to integrate the acquired knowledge. The approach has been applied to a multi-agent simulation of a trade game. It is instantiated for the processes of partner selection, negotiation, and the interaction between deceit and trust in trade.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    A sixth dimension `Indulgence versus Restraint' was added in 2010 (Hofstede, Hofstede & Minkov (2010), after completion of the present model.

  2. 2.

    http://cormas.cirad.fr/indexeng.htm

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Correspondence to Gert Jan Hofstede .

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Hofstede, G.J., Jonker, C.M., Verwaart, T. (2013). A Model of Culture in Trading Agents. In: Sycara, K., Gelfand, M., Abbe, A. (eds) Models for Intercultural Collaboration and Negotiation. Advances in Group Decision and Negotiation, vol 6. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5574-1_4

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