Decision Biases and Decision Support Systems Development

The view of decision-making that has informed most decision support systems research has been Simon’s process theory. Further, the majority DSS work has focussed on the choice phase of Simon’s model of decision-making. Decision bias theory does not focus on the choice process but considers the possibility of systematic and persistent errors in all phases of judgement and decision-making. Decision biases are cognitions or mental behaviours that prejudice decision quality in a significant number of decisions for a significant number of people. Using a general model of DSS development, the incorporation of decision biases into DSS development is addressed under two strategies: general debiasing, where a bias rather than a task is the development focus, and using biases as a focusing construct during a specific DSS engagement. The later approach is likely to be the most important in practice. An action research study of a bias focused DSS project is presented, which indicates that the use of biases as a central theme in DSS development can be effective in delivering a system, and ultimately a decision outcome, that is of value to the client.