This chapter presents a thorough review of current practice in eliciting, representing and amalgamating knowledge from multiple experts, with a focus on the use of graphical representations to support the process. The important points of the discussion are illustrated by presenting a specific methodology for eliciting and combining knowledge from multiple experts. This methodology provides a statistically defensive summarization for assessment. The results of a pilot test of its implementation over the Internet are also presented. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the need for knowledge acquisition techniques that permit quantitative assessment of the quality of the rules developed based upon the acquired knowledge and subsequently embedded in decision support systems. 3 I.

This report documents the use of the programs referred to by Mark'oczy and Goldberg (1995) for causal map elicitation and analysis. It only documents the software and not the method. Only the cause mapping analysis software is discussed and nothing is said about statistical analysis. This is still incomplete. Biographical Note Jeff Goldberg is the author of the software this report documents, and has contributed to the method that the software is designed to support. He has a bachelor's degree from the University of California, Santa Cruz in Linguistics, and was employed by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences Research Institute of Linguistics and the Theoretical Linguistics Program of the Eotvos University (ELTE), Budapest when most of this software was written. He is currently employed by the Computer Centre at Cranfield University. He can best be reached as J.Goldberg@cranfield.ac.uk. His PGP key finger print, for those who prefer secure Email, is 4E 33 96 71 1E 98 E7 93 20 E2 48 6D 52...

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Engineering large and complex simulation systems is becoming more reliant on the reuse of existing simulation models. While existing technical standards facilitate syntactic and technical interoperability among disparate simulation models, there is still lack of formal methods that enable sound reasoning about the conceptual congruity of models that are selected for composition. This paper suggests a graph-theoretic approach to measure the extent of conceptual congruity of models within a new context. The premise of the approach is based on having contextualized models that provide introspective access to their metamodels. A metamodel associated with a reusable model entails a conceptualization of the domain in which it is originally designed to be situated in. The metamodels are used to instantiate a metagraph and graph distance metrics are used to measure the alignment of metamodels in the context of the new application domain. 1

Business-IT alignment has become an important strategic imperative for organizations competing in an e-business world. Recent research (Reich and Benbasat 2000) indicates that building a shared understanding between business and IT executives is one way of strengthening this alignment. This paper describes a study that examines one aspect of the cognitive basis of shared understanding between business and IT executives; shared cognition. Using Personal Construct Theory (Kelly 1955), this study uses cognitive mapping techniques to analyse the structure and substance of shared cognition between these executives. Eighty business and IT executives in six companies participated in this study. The results indicate that a higher level of shared cognition is positively related to a higher level of business-IT alignment, but that greater diversity in cognitive structure and cognitive content (i.e. a lower level of shared cognition) coincide with a lower level of alignment. Implications for practitioners and researchers are discussed.

This paper offers a refined conceptualization of consensus formation and demonstrates in three organizations how this conceptualization enables us to uncover new patterns of consensus building. It describes a longitudinal study which investigated consensus formation in three organizations undergoing major strategic change. The study explored whether consensus building occurred during the strategic change, and if so, how. Initial participants of consensus were also investigated as well as changes in the scope of participants in consensus. Consensus building did occur, but contrary to some views, less through an increase in the strength of consensus and more through an increase in the scope of consensus. Additionally, initial consensus was not located among members of the top management team, but more within an interest group whose members benefited from the given direction of the change.

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Abstract. In this paper we propose the use of Fuzzy Cognitive Map (FCM), a well-established Artificial Intelligence technique that incorporates ideas from Artificial Neural Networks and Fuzzy Logic, for E-Commerce strategic planning. FCMs create models as collections of concepts and the various causal relations that exist between these concepts. The strategic planning capabilities of the FCM structure are examined and presented using a model concerning the e-commerce section of an e-business company. The model is examined dynamically through simulations, in order to simulate scenarios proposed by company’s managers. Strategic Planning is made by viewing dynamically the consequences of the scenario’s actions. Conclusions are drawn for the use of FCM for e-commerce strategic planning. 1 Introduction to Fuzzy Cognitive Maps Fuzzy Cognitive Maps have been introduced by Kosko [1, 2] based on Axelord's work on Cognitive Maps [3] and are considered a combination of fuzzy logic and artificial neural networks. FCMs create models as collections of concepts and the