Macro issues in the development of organizational decision support systems

Many lash in the organization require organization-wide support. This support may be inform of data, model, took or people. A “‘seamless” communication environment is needed to./acilitate this support. This paper discusses macro issues involved in the development of an Organization Decision Support System (ODSS). Spectjkal!v, we address issues like; whatfactors needs to be considered in developing ODSS? what issues are important in which envhanment? In addition, we also discuss ODSS architecture and technology that is (un)available to make ODSSfeasible. Introduction As competition, bolh domestic and foreign, is growing organizations are looking for different ways to survive and to gain strategic advantage. Organizations are changing structure [2], competitive strategies [40] and merging or expanding overseas to remain competitive [37]. This is changing managerial role. Managerial decision domain is widening requiring broader range of domestic and international knowledge [ 1,2,9]. Managers can no longer make effective decisions based on static local information but need to go beyond organizational and even national boundaries to acquire relevant information [ l&24, 26, 341. In the 90’s information technolog)r will play an important role in providing information support, human expertise and mimicking human brain in a borderless environment. In the 90’s system’s emphasis will be on “total” organizational support systems due to increasing competition and changing structure of corporate amcrica [36, 431. More and more decisions are becoming interdependent and teamoriented. Instead of single dimension and local frame of reference managers need multiple dimensions and mulriple frame of references in an interactive decision making environment. Considering this trends there is a need for enterprise-wide support systems. However, systems providing such support have only recently gained attention. There appears to be a big gap in the application of information technology to organizational decision support systems (ODSS). This paper focuses on macro issues that must be considered in the development of ODSS. In addition, ODSS architecture is also proposed. Organizational Decision Support Systems: The term ODSS was first discussed by Philippakis et. al [33] and A. M. McCosh [32]. Since then many authors have provided their definition of ODSS. George [ 11, 121 and King et. al [21,22] have provided an excellent review of the ODSS literature. It is not our intention to repeat these reviews and readers are refaTed to those papers. In his review George [ 121 summarized common elements in ODSS deIinilion. The focus of an ODSS is an Organizational task or activity or a decision that ‘a&&s several organizational units or corporate issues; An ODSS cuts across organizational functions or hierarchical layers; An ODSS almost necessarily involves computer-based technologies, and may also involve communication technologies. We do not entirely disagree with these common observations, however, we have modified some and added others elements to ODSS definition: Single or multiple decision makers . multiple decisions types multiple organization units including global units ODSS must involve some form of communication supports multiple organizational processes In this paper, we define ODSS as, ” A computerized system that supports people making enterprise-wide decisions in an interactive environment”. Decisions may be independent, 917 lOGO-3425/95$4.00@1995IEEE Proceedings of the 28th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS '95) 1060-3425/95 $10.00 © 1995 IEEE Proceedings of the 28th Annuul Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences 1995 interdependent or pooled, spanning locally or globally; may cut across levels; and may involve single or multiple decision makers. People, themselves, may be locally or globally dispersed. This definition of ODSS includes all systems that provide “borderless” and “seamless” decision making support across functional/ divisional/national boundaries. Figure 1 shows different ODSS types. DDSS. We take the factors discussed by Chung et al. [4] a step further both in dimension and context. In this paper we will discuss macro issues (factors) that must be considered before developing an ODSS within the conlext of our broader definition of an ODSS. These issues are macro issues because they address concerns at the organizational level.