Abstract

Group Decision Support Systems (GDSS) form a sub-field of Decision Support Systems (DSS) where information technology and decision models are combined to facilitate the effective and efficient working of groups. Using online patent databases, this study identified that researchers and professionals produced few GDSS patents between 2005 and 2009. Selected GDSS patents are sorted and presented according to five categories that are used to identify the main objective of a GDSS: collaborative decision, negotiation, GDSS for social networks, group consensus and design of group preferences. For each of these categories, a sample of patents is presented in order to illustrate what has been tackled with regard to this subject.

Keywords: Group Decision Support Systems (GDSS), group decision models, group decision systems, multicriteria decision support systems, multicriteria decision methods (MCDM), negotiation