Short Paper submitted to ISMICK 2008 International Symposium on the Management of Industrial and Corporate Knowledge Rio de Janeiro, 3 rd -5 th Nov. 2008 1 Decision Making supporting Knowledge Management Fátima C.C. Dargam a,b a SimTech Simulation Technology, Graz, Austria (F.Dargam@SimTechnology.com) b ILTC, Instituto de Lógica e Teoria da Ciência, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (fccd@iltc.br) (www.iltc.br ) Abstract There exists constructive feedback loops between the areas of Decision Making (DM) and Knowledge Management (KM). Decision Making’s requirements can drive more appropriate and customized developments of Knowledge Management, while the latter can improve decision making by bridging existing information and communication gaps within organizations. Hence, DM devises developments of KM, which in turn can be applied to the organization’s decision making process in a constantly evolving spiral, resulting in better outcomes all around. This work investigates the ways in which DM and KM flow within organizations and points out the profitable aspects of their interaction. Bridging DM and KM Why DM supporting KM and vice-versa? The answer to this question resides on the fact that due to shifts in market demands, high impact decisions are also increasingly being made by people rather than only by top management. In this context, in some cases neither management nor the people implicitly making those decisions are aware of their decisions impact, mainly due to lack of sufficient supporting information / knowledge. It is well known for almost a decade that Knowledge Management, as an information system movement, has had a considerable impact on Decision Support Systems research. Proficiency in KM is increasingly important to the competitiveness of decision makers as we rapidly move into the global knowledge society. On the other hand, DM is a knowledge-intensive activity with knowledge as its raw materials, work-in-process, by-products, and finished goods. DM is, most of the times, used as a multi-participant process, which is increasingly interactive. Within a management level, however, the decision process is not always multi-participant due to lack of staff empowerment. Interactions among the decision-makers may happen in many different ways. The decision-making participants may agree towards a common goal, or they may have different arguments and points of view, which lead the process to contradictory objectives. KM was conceived to address the issues that arise from the need of handling knowledge availability within cooperative environments. As organizations move towards a more knowledge-based structure, their business success relies more and more on how productively and efficiently they develop and apply knowledge. Hence, KM is considered a key factor for the generation and sustainability of organizational success. According to [Earl 2001], KM plays a central role in process and product improvement, as well as in executive decision making and organizational adaptation and renewal.