Decision Support Systems: Issues and Challenges; Proceedings of an International Task Force Meeting, June 23-25, 1980

This book reports on a three-day meeting on Decision Support Systems held at IIASA. IIASA's interest in sponsoring the meeting was spurred by several factors. First, the term DSS clearly is used in a wide range of contexts; we hoped to develop a deeper understanding of the term and the new field to which it refers. Second, we felt that ongoing work in the DSS field would be enhanced by interaction between professionals who had been working on such systems and people from fields that function as "resource disciplines" for DSS. Finally we wished to bring professionals from several nations together, from the east as well as the west, to share experiences and to assess the viability of the DSS concept in different cultures. The broad objectives set for this meeting were realized in a number of ways. Virtually all the participants testified that they had gained a deeper understanding of DSS, the role it can play in asssisting managers in organizations, and the need for further development in key areas

Integrating group Delphi, fuzzy logic and expert systems for marketing strategy development:the hybridisation and its effectiveness

A hybrid approach for integrating group Delphi, fuzzy logic and expert systems for developing marketing strategies is proposed in this paper. Within this approach, the group Delphi method is employed to help groups of managers undertake SWOT analysis. Fuzzy logic is applied to fuzzify the results of SWOT analysis. Expert systems are utilised to formulate marketing strategies based upon the fuzzified strategic inputs. In addition, guidelines are also provided to help users link the hybrid approach with managerial judgement and intuition. The effectiveness of the hybrid approach has been validated with MBA and MA marketing students. It is concluded that the hybrid approach is more effective in terms of decision confidence, group consensus, helping to understand strategic factors, helping strategic thinking, and coupling analysis with judgement, etc