Supporting self-facilitation in distributed group decisions

Abstract

The paper addresses the problem of supporting self-facilitation of distributed autonomous groups of decision-makers from an agent-oriented perspective. In contrast to monolithic designs based on functional decomposition, it is argued that an agent-oriented approach is the appropriate means to provide better support for group meetings. The focus is on distributed and asynchronous meetings, detailing the conceptual modelling aspects of an implemented agent-based GDSS which exhibits an emergent functionality able to support in an effective way the dynamics of the group decision process.