On the development of knowledge management services for collaborative decision making

Admitting that the quality of a decision depends on the quality of the knowledge used to make it, it is argued that the enhancement of the decision making efficiency and effectiveness is strongly related to the appropriate exploitation of all possible organizational knowledge resources. On the other hand, software is perceived as an encapsulation of knowledge. Especially software tools offering Knowledge Management can become substantial organizational artifacts. Developing such tools should be in absolute compliance with the organizational practices so as to be easily integrated with and augment every day activities. Towards this end, this paper presents a multidisciplinary approach for developing knowledge management services for the capturing the organizational knowledge in order to augment teamwork in terms of knowledge elicitation, sharing and construction, thus enhancing decision making quality. Based on a properly defined ontology model, our approach is supported by a web-based tool that serves as a forum of reciprocal knowledge exchange, conveyed through structured argumentative discourses, the ultimate aim being to support the related decision making process. © 2006 ACADEMY PUBLISHER.