The Collaborative Decision Making Conference (CDM08) is a joined event. This conference has for objective to join two working groups on Decision Support Systems: the IFIP TC8/Working Group 8.3 and the Euro Working Group on Decision Support Systems.

The first IFIP TC8/Working Group 8.3 conference was organised in 1982 in Vienna (Austria). Since this year the IFIP conferences present the latest innovations and achievements of academic communities on Decision Support Systems (DSS). These advances include theory systems, computer aided methods, algorithms, techniques, and applications related to supporting decision making.

The development of approaches for applying information systems technology to increase the effectiveness of decision-making in situations where the computer system can support and enhance human judgements in the performance of tasks that have elements which cannot be specified in advance.

To improve ways of synthesizing and applying relevant work from resource disciplines to practical implementation of systems that enhance decision support capability. The resource disciplines include: information technology, artificial intelligence, cognitive psychology, decision theory, organisational theory, operations research and modelling.

The EWG on DSS was created in Madeira (Portugal) following the Euro Summer Institute on DSS, in May 1989. Researchers involved in this group meet each year in different countries through a workshop. Researches in this group come from Operational Research area but also from Decision Theory, Multicriteria Decision Making methodologies, Fuzzy sets and modelling tools.

Based on the introduction of Information and Communication Technologies in organisations, the decisional process is evolving from a mono actor to a multi actor situation in which cooperation is a way to make the decision.

For 2008, the objective was to create a synergy between the two groups around a specific focus: Collaborative Decision Making. Papers submitted to the conference have for main objectives to support Collaborative Decision Making but with several kinds of tools or models. 69 papers have been submitted coming from 24 countries. 34 full papers have been selected organised in 8 themes constituting the part I of this book. 9 short papers have been accepted as short papers organised in 3 themes constituting the part II. Nevertheless, a variety of topics are also presented through several papers coming reinforce the vivacity of researches conducted in Decision Support Systems.

The contributions are organised as follows:

Part I: Full Papers

Models for Collaborative Decision Making

Collaborative Decision Making for Supply Chain

Collaborative Decision Making for Medical Applications

Collaboration tools for Group Decision Making

Tools for Collaborative Decision Making

Collaborative Decision Making in ERP

Knowledge management for Collaborative Decision Making

Collaborative Decision Making Applications

Part II: Short Papers

Tools for Collaborative Decision Making

Collaborative Decision Making: Cases studies

Organisational Collaborative Decision Making

Hoping that joined projects could emerge from groups' members during and after the conference and hoping that new challenges could arise during the conference concerning Decision Support Systems researches. It is then our responsibility to maintain this domain an attractive and interesting investigating area. For the future, new conferences will be organised for both groups: the IFIP TC8/WG8.3 and the EWGDSS, hoping that this event, CDM08 2008, will stay the meeting point.

As editors of this book, it is our duty to conclude by expressing our gratitude to all contributors to these proceedings, to the members of the steering and program committees who helped us selecting the papers, making this conference as interesting as possible and preparing these proceedings.

Pascale Zaraté, CDM08 Chairperson

Jean Pierre Belaud, CDM08 Organisational Committee member

Guy Camilleri, CDM08 Organisational Committee member

Franck Ravat, CDM08 Organisational Committee member