Understanding Organisational Decision Support Maturity

Abstract

Forty years after Gorry and Scott Morton’s seminal paper on DSS, supporting decisions in organisation is still a critical objective. Given the elapsed time since DSSs were first introduced, it is important to gauge the scope and quality of decision support provided to managers. Using Executive MBA students as informants about decision making in their organisations, the authors carried out 10 case studies of Irish organisations to assess their maturity in terms of decision support usage. The findings indicate that, in the vast majority of firms, decision support is still not available to help manage in situations involving high levels of abstraction. As was the case at the beginning of the history of DSS, the operational level is still where DSSs are used most consistently across firms. Furthermore, this study illustrates that engaging with managers on the topic of decision making is difficult, given the possibility of bias and misrepresentation inherent in the reality of decision making.