Information systems engineering for distributed decisionmaking

There are many issues associated with the design and evaluation of information systems to aid real-time dynamic decisionmaking in environments where decisionmaking responsibility and knowledge bases are physically separated and potentially geographically distributed; and where there are multiple agents, each responsible for portions of the decisionmaking effort. There are a great many concerns that must be addressed for the enhancement of decision flexibility and facilitation of cooperative decisionmaking in organizational settings, and for applications such as command and control. The purpose of this paper is to discuss some of these, in terms of contemporary research and research needs in this area, and to provide a partial taxonomy of distributed decisionmaking issues as they relate to the design of information systems.