On interactive communication and decision making

In this paper, the process of communication among disparate individuals and functions within an organisation is considered. Attention is focused on the exchange of views within groups through which ultimately agreement may be reached on commitment to a course of action. Such consensus is not envisaged as a situation in which all individual preferences can be "perfectly" satisfied but as one in which there is development from initial differences of opinion to one that is capable of commanding actionable decisions by the group. The paper describes this process as one of interactive communication and goes on to show how a group decision support system may facilitate the process. In the final part of the paper, a case study in which such a system was used is outlined and explained.