Tools for Collaborative Decision-Making

Decision-making has evolved recently thanks to the introduction of information and communication technologies in many organizations, which has led to new kinds of decision-making processes, called “collaborative decision-making”, at the organizational and cognitive levels. This book looks at the development of the decision-making process in organizations. Decision-aiding and its paradigm of problem solving are defined, showing how decision-makers now need to work in a cooperative way. Definitions of cooperation and associated concepts such as collaboration and coordination are given and a framework of cooperative decision support systems is presented, including intelligent DSS, cooperative knowledge-based systems, workflow, group support systems, collaborative engineering, integrating with a collaborative decision-making model in part or being part of global projects. Several models and experimental studies are also included showing that these new processes have to be supported by new types of tools, several of which are described in order to calculate or simulate solutions or global solutions for decision-making modification. Definitions and new trends for these models are given, along with types of systems.

Contents

1. Alteration of Decision-Making Processes in Organizations.
2. New Decision-Making Processes.
3. The Need to Cooperate.
4. Cooperative Decision-Making.
5. Activity Support Systems.
6. Cooperative Decision Support Systems: CDSSS.

About the Authors

Pascale Zaraté is Professor at Toulouse 1 Capitole University, France. She conducts her research at the IRIT Laboratory and is the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Decision Support Systems Technologies. She is co-chair of the European Working Group on DSS and has published several studies and books.