Complexity Issues and New Trends in Multiple Criteria Decision Aid

This paper is an introduction to the present chapter and aims to outline a framework within which all the included papers find a common conceptual thread while some terminological differences exist These reflect the complexity that is inherent to any decision aiding process in a real organisational context, a complexity which does not tolerate, for various validity reasons, a mutilating simplification that is often imposed by classical mathematical approaches. A need of new tools which might favorize a more mature and integrated development of the analyst’s activities, within cultural contexts other than those hypothesized by the classical assumptions of OR/DA, is also underlined. This permits one to recall some new trends of MCDA research which are, at the moment, found in literature.