Downloads & Free Reading Options - Results

The purpose of this thesis is twofold; (1) Explore some design issues for building group decision support systems for non-cooperation environments, and (2) Expand CO-OP, a cooperative multiple criteria group decision support system, to support particular classes of group decisions. From the conceptual standpoint, this work argues for that cooperation is a special case of non-cooperation. The following design requirements are proposed: (1) Negotiation as a capability within model management, (2) Greater capabilities in database management, and (3) Increased flexibility for the user interface. The present version of Co-oP has, with this work, implemented the following features: (1) Scrolling windows to handle group problems with large size, (2) Code optimization to provide fast feedback to members, (3) Improved heuristics for the Negotiable Alternatives Identifier (NAI), (4) Implementation of the Mediator module, and (5) Allow more advanced data manipulation to promote data exchange in competitive environments (e.g., data security and sharing). The above implementation has encompassed approximately 6,000 lines of original Pascal code, and 3,000 lines of modified code. (Author)