The objective of this conference was to foster a healthy exchange of ideas and experience in the domain of multiple criteria problem solving. This conference was an outgrowth of an earlier conference I organized with Herve Thiriez at CESA, Jouy-en-Josas, France in 1975 during my stay at the European Institute in Brussels. When I re joined the State University of New York at Buffalo that year, I be gan to search for potential sponsors for this conference. Approxi mately one year later when the prospects began to look promising, I contacted several individuals to act as an informal coordinating committee for the conference. I wanted to avoid biasing the con ference completely to my way of thinking! The members of this committee were Jim Dyer, Peter Fishburn, Ralph Kee. ney, Bernard Roy (Universite de Paris IX Dauphine who was unable to participate in the conference), and Milan Zeleny. Though the committee did not meet, per se, their inputs regarding format, possible participants, number of participants, length of the conference, and so on were of great value to me in planning and organizing the conference. I wish to acknowledge the contributions of this group. We were most fortunate in obtaining the financial support of the European Institute for Advanced Studies in Management, Brussels ·(one of the sponsors of the Jouy-en-Josas conference), the Office of Naval Research, and the State University of New York at Buffalo.
