Integrating simulation and argumentation in organizational decision making

This paper presents a framework for organizational decision making that provides simulation and argumentation features. The overall approach allows for distributed and asynchronous collaboration and aims at giving an active role to the decision makers involved in the solution of the underlying problems. Its main contribution lies in the seamless integration of a discourse-based decision support tool with an organizational knowledge base, a system dynamics simulation environment and a collection of models for addressing specific strategic issues. The usability of the proposed framework is illustrated through a comprehensive example of collective formulation of manufacturing strategy.