Editors: Frederic Adam, Business Information Systems, University College Cork, Ireland and
Patrick Humphreys, Institute of Social Psychology, London School of Economics, UK

PROPOSAL DUE DATE: May 31, 2006

Forward all proposals to: fadam@afis.ucc.ie

Idea Group Reference: www.idea-group-ref.com

This new encyclopedia published by Idea Group Inc. is aimed at the area of Decision Making in organisations with particular emphasis on Decision Support for Managers in its broadest sense. Much of the excellent research carried out in the area of human and computer support for managerial decision making has not been published under the DSS banner, but under a variety of other banners, both neighbouring banners, such as Executive Information Systems (EIS), Groupware, Group Decision Support Systems (GDSS) or Knowledge Management; or more distant banners, such as Social Psychology or Economics. There has, however, been a failure to adequately account for this diversity and present a coherent and organised vision of the field of decision support overall.

The aim of this new project is to present a complete, state-of-the-art vision of everything we, as a community of researchers, know or think we know about how organisational actors can be supported in their decision making activities. Thus, we want to explicitly do away with any limitations in scope to consider operational, tactical as well as strategic decisions, computer based as well as human based support systems, structured, semi-structured and unstructured decision problems; and decisions taken by individuals by groups, in synchronous or distributed fashion. This will lead to a truly comprehensive vision of decision making in organizations and how it can be supported.

To meet this ambitious objective of completeness, contributions are invited on any topic which falls in the area of managerial decision making and decision support. Contributions should be in the 3000 to 3500 words bracket, be logically structured to describe in detail the objective of the paper and lead to a definitive conclusion, spelling out what contribution they make to their topic and to the area in general. As is customary for such encyclopedia entries, contributions should include a list of key terms featured in the paper and a concise definition for each of them. Contributions that focus on specific relevant case studies (preferably naming the real organisations involved – but bearing in mind the need for explicit permission from the company for the publisher to publish the case study) will also be accepted and inserted in a specific section. These types of contributions are intended to illustrate the core concepts on the Decision Support agenda, and authors must ensure that they spell out in detail the purpose of the case and the elements in the practice of Decision Support which it seeks to illustrate.

INVITED SUBMISSIONS: Individuals interested in submitting their articles on suggested topics or other related topics in their area(s) of interest should submit a proposal by NO LATER THAN May 31, 2006. We strongly encourage other topics that have not been listed in our suggested topic list, particularly if the topic is related to the research area in which you have expertise. Upon acceptance of your proposal, you will have two months to prepare your article (3,000-3,500 words) and 7-10 related terms and their appropriate definitions. Guidelines for preparing your short article and terms and definitions, as well as a sample article and terms and definitions, may be found on the main menu of this project at http://girtab.ucc.ie/fadam/encyclopedia_of_DSS_.htm.

Please forward your proposal, including your name and affiliation, to Frederic Adam, at fadam@afis.ucc.ie by no later than May 31, 2006. You will be notified about the status of your proposed topics by June 10, 2006. This book is tentatively scheduled for publishing by Idea Group Reference, www.idea-group-ref.com, in 2007.

Potential topics which we wish to cover include:

•	DSS, DMSS, EIS, Groupware
•	Distributed decision making and decision support
•	Business intelligence
•	Implementation and re-use of Decision Support Systems
•	Research methods for the decision and decision support area
•	Methodologies for Developing DSS
•	DSS Architectures
•	Understanding managerial decision making at individual, group and firm level
•	Supporting decision making with computer systems for individual, 
group and corporate situations
•	DSS and uncertainty in decision making
•	End User Computing and Development related to decision making
 and support
•	Multi-criteria decision making
•	Modelling for decision support
•	New technologies and decision support
•	OLAP and multi-dimensional DSS
•	Dashboards of information 
•	Interfaces for DSS
•	Visualisation techniques and technologies for DSS
•	Data Warehousing for DSS
•	Enterprise wide applications and Decision Support 
•	Case studies of DSS development, implementation and use

Authors with additional ideas should contact us to discuss how to make this encyclopedia as complete as possible.

Editorial Board:

David Arnott (Monash university, Australia).
Frada Burstein (Monash University, Australia).
Sven Carlson (University of Lund, Sweden).
Georgios Doukidis (University of Athens, Greece).
Peter Gelleri (Budapest Univ. of Tech and Economics, Hungary)
Zita Paprika (Corvinus University Budapest, Hungary)
David Paradice (Florida State University, USA)
Jean-Charles Pomerol (University Paris 6, Paris, France)
Dan Power (University of Northern Iowa, USA and DSSresources.com)