Exploring the Interplay between Domain-Independent and Domain-Specific Concepts in Computer-Supported Collaboration Christina E. Evangelou and Nikos Karacapilidis Industrial Management and Information Systems Lab MEAD, University of Patras, 26500 Rio-Patras, Greece {chriseva, nikos}@mech.upatras.gr Abstract. Communities of practice need the appropriate means to collaborate in order to reach decisions by exploiting all possible knowledge resources. To address this issue, we have developed a web-based platform that enables members of such communities collaborate through carrying out well-structured argumentative discourses. Our approach comprises a variety of concepts, methods, models and techniques, deriving among others from the decision making, knowledge management and argumentation fields, and properly interweaves them with the aid of an ontology model. This paper explores the interplay of the domain-independent and domain-specific concepts coming from the above fields, and comments on their embodiment in the above platform. Our multidisciplinary approach provides the foundations for developing a platform for brainstorming and capturing of the organizational knowledge in order to augment teamwork in terms of knowledge elicitation, sharing and construction, thus enhancing decision quality. 1 Introduction Decision making at a strategic level comprises the identification of the basic goals of an enterprise, the consideration of alternative courses of action, and the allocation of resources necessary for carrying out these goals (Chandler, 1962). These tasks are usually undertaken by a group of managers working together to solve the related issues. According to Simon (1977), decision making comprises three principal phases: identifying problematic situations or opportunities that call for decisions (intelligence phase), inventing or developing possible courses of action and testing of their feasibility (design phase), and selecting a certain course of action to be followed (choice phase). In the strategic decision making case, the quality of a formulated strategy (course of action) depends on the quality of the knowledge used during all these phases (Feurer and Chaharbaghi, 1995). Moreover, it is strongly associated with the level of communication and coordination established between the decision makers during their collaboration. In order to provide contemporary business organizations with the necessary means to develop successful strategic plans, an integration of tools and approaches coming from diverse disciplines is required. Of particular importance is the provision of a platform supporting collaboration, which aids decision makers attain a synthesis (and reflect on the convergence) of their highly specialized state-of- the-art knowledge. Our aim is to furnish communities of practice engaged in strategic decision making with the appropriate means to collaborate via a properly structured argumentation platform, so as to reach a decision by exploiting all possible knowledge resources. This platform can be used for bringing together people holding complementary knowledge of a specific domain, which can be unified, revised and improved while it is being used for decision support. Our overall approach comprises a variety of concepts, methods, models and techniques deriving from the fields of Decision Support Systems, Knowledge Management Systems, Multicriteria Decision Aid, Argumentation and Semantic Web, as well as from the particular knowledge domain considered each time (the Manufacturing Management domain is considered in this paper). This paper explores a series of issues related to the seamless integration of the concepts coming from the above fields. The proposed integration is achieved through the development of an ontology model that exploits their interrelations and rules holding among them (Davies, 2003). Always referring to computer-supported collaboration, we distinguish between domain-independent and domain-specific processes to be provided, and we comment on the interplay between the associated concepts. The conceptual framework of our approach is presented in Section 2. Its embodiment in an already developed web-based collaboration platform is discussed in Section 3, through an example concerning argumentative discourse on the issue of building additional capacity for the needs of a specific company. Final remarks and future work directions are sketched in Section 4.