Co-oP. A group decision support system for cooperative multiple criteria group decision making (Q1187651)

An important distinction that has been introduced in the literature on Decision Support Systems (DSS), is between the cases of single or multiple decision makers (e.g. a committee). Group Decision Support Systems (GDSS) address the needs of these latter. Group decision settings are in turn distinguished in cooperative and hostile. In a few non cooperative group decision situations, a computerized support system may play a mediator role, whereas in situations of intense conflicts computer assistance is ineffective. A GDSS must give support to communications between the components of the group (speed and geographical dispersion of the DM's often make difficult face-to-face meetings). Moreover it is essential that a GDSS be capable to support not only the study of the decision problem, but also the process whereby the decision is reached. The author of this book has developed, jointly with professor M. Jarke, a GDSS for cooperative decision making called Co-oP, that apparently achieves significant advances in this research arena. Actually it supports and integrates communications in a network linking individual workstations, individual and group decision making (via aggregation of preferences), and, for cases in which unanimity does not prevail, consensus seeking procedures. Bui's book aims at presenting the results of the research activity, that has lead to the development of Co-oP, in the general framework of group decision theory, methods, and support systems design criteria. After reviewing DSS concepts and history, it covers design criteria of the various components of a GDSS, the mathematical approach to group decision making (that leans on multicriteria decision methods), the architecture of Co-oP, some empirical studies (based on simulated decision situations), and, in the finally part of the book, possible design extensions to address non cooperative decision making and to develop organizational decision support systems. Moving along these lines the author makes many interesting points. A few of them may be questionable and require further study to be assessed. Actually little is known to day about the acceptance of computer based decision support in general and even less when the very process that generates organizational decisions is addressed. Probably we have to wait that single user DSS and groupware catch on before we may hope to gather a reasonably extended experimental evidence, that may yield more secure indications for research orientations. The book should appeal anyone interested in this area of research, but in this respect I would suggest a final version with a more detailed and self-contained exposition of mathematical methods. However even more useful would be to take advantage of the achievements presented, for a more effective attempt to attract the attention, and have reactions from, the potential end users. To this purpose the availability of software along with inclusion of an additional intuitive presentation of the mathematical contents as well as discussion of real life examples would help a good deal. Overall this is a nice book. Perhaps its main merit is that, to put it in professor Jarke's words (PREFACE p. VI): ``The experiences reported in this book seem to confirm the opinion that the development of group decision support systems is an important area in Information Systems research that deserves much further study by computer scientists''. I would add that the same is true in general for research in the area decision support systems, and for scientists of all the numerous fields (see e.g. the editorial of the first issue of the journal Decision Support Systems) related to this area.