As a professional organization, EADM is a strange animal. It comes to life every two years for the SPUDM conference and then essentially hibernates in the interim. In fact, SPUDM predates EADM and it is important to recall that EADM was created to ensure the continuity of SPUDM conferences. So perhaps that’s all it should do?

And yet, several members feel that EADM should be more than just a support for SPUDM. Some question – with no little justification – the return they get for their annual membership dues. After all, SPUDM conferences are supposed to be self-financing.

Last year, as President of EADM, John Maule instigated a series of reflections on this topic amongst the EADM board members. As your new President, I reported on the substance of these discussions at the recent business meeting in Warsaw at SPUDM 21. However, few members attended the business meeting – and since I feel that we had some important things to say – I am taking this opportunity to report on what we said and to solicit your aid.

Attendance at SPUDM conferences – as well as the high quality of the many contributions – attests to the interest and talent for decision making research in Europe. However, this talent and interest is not matched by institutional support. One reason, I feel, is that we are all so busy doing our own “thing” that we fail to see how we can create synergies for all. For example, we miss out collectively on the many individual successes of our members. I strongly believe that when one of our members is successful professionally we should all rejoice in the achievement and literally take and enjoy some of the credit. A further important problem is that we lack information about what is going on in different parts of Europe and people from outside our organization have very little idea about what we do.

Given these issues, let me be more concrete and specify what the Board considers long-term goals for EADM that go beyond just supporting SPUDM conferences. There are three main goals:

In short, the goals of the Board are to increase the image of decision research in Europe – to have positive effects on research funding, academic positions, and influence that reflects our unique knowledge.

These goals were well-received by the few members who attended the business meeting in Warsaw but the real question is how to achieve them. In the short-term, several actions can be taken:

Finally, if you have any reactions to the above, please contact me or any of the Board members. Our goal is to promote decision research in Europe.