A method for interactive articulation of information requirements for strategic decision support

Abstract

Decision support for strategic management, an extension to the traditional decision support systems, has been seen as an important area of research where the theory, methods and technologies can bring in a great deal of benefit to the whole enterprise at the executive level. The work in the paper first of all examines two paradigms of information provision for strategic decision support. The information requirements for decision-making are studied to reveal that the level of detail, granularity, format of presentation, and broad range of information type are unique for the applications at the strategic level. The provision of relevant information involves articulation of requirements based on the decision problems described by the executive manager. Secondly, this paper presents the MITAIS approach that allows the user to describe a decision problem interactively and assists articulation of the problem into a presentation in a decision space, by prompting possible patterns of decision dimensions. It further assists a configuration of information requirements into an information space, which covers the information required for the identified problem. MITAIS comprises a set of techniques to support articulation of a decision problem into a decision space, configuration of information space and the mapping between these two spaces. A case study has been used throughout the paper to illustrate the method. A critical evaluation of the development of MITAIS has been carried out to assess the validity of the research. Finally, the paper is concluded with suggestions for future work.