Sources of Unstructuredness in Decision Situations: Towards a framework for DSS Development

Decision support systems (DSS) are computer-based information systems which support unstructured or semi-structured managerial decisions in organizations. While it is yet to be recognized on a wide scale, DSS have become extremely important in today's world. Many reengineering exercises are actually built around DSS. A knowledge management infrastructure often fails as organizations cannot derive support for specific decisions from it. DSS are generally aimed at reducing the unstructuredness in a decision situation. A decision situation consists of the decision itself, the decision maker and the organizational environment. An attempt at developing a DSS essentially involves an attempt at reducing unstructuredness in the decision situation. This paper presents a framework which would allow decision analysts to identify such specific sources of unstructuredness at a much more refined level than the analysis available in the literature today.