An examination of organizational strategies for supporting DSS

Abstract

Decision support systems (DSS) are widely used by managers to provide problem solving assistance. Despite their widespread use, little is known about how organizations support DSS users. This paper discusses support practices that are thought to affect DSS groups' ability to provide support services, and reports on a field study that sought to identify the support characteristics of a sample of groups. This study also investigated differences among groups that were placed in different organizational locations. Managers of twenty-three DSS groups were interviewed to provide information on group organizational location, staff-to-user ratio, staff backgrounds, formalization, and other support characteristics. The results suggest that DSS groups generally follow some of the recommendations found in the literature with respect to their management while disregarding others. The support characteristics also tend to vary when comparing groups across organizational locations, suggesting that certain strengths and limitations may be associated with organizational support strategies.