What are current developments and issues related to group decision support?
by Dan Power
Editor, DSSResources.com
Specialized decision rooms with fixed desktop computers have become largely obsolete. Team rooms and corporate board room are however increasingly computing intensive spaces. The computing technologies deployed for supporting teams and group decision making have become more mobile and more ubiquitous. People bring tablets to decision meetings and use a wide array of collaborative technologies for both synchronous and asynchronous distance meetings and team decision support. Teams probably need more decision support today because members are more distributed, more information is available and choices are perhaps more complicated. Commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) software provides generic tools to support teams. It seems researchers have become complacement about investigating team decision support. Are we breaking new ground in terms of tools?
The developments in handheld devices and cellular technologies provide many opportunities to support team information sharing and collaborative decision making. At the personal, social network level, you can get quick feedback from friends. At the individual and group level in organizations, decision makers are immersed in a web of information. Video conferencing is almost common place and rich media collaboration penetrates most homes and offices in developed countries. A global communications network has changed the discussion about group decision support systems.
Does "Like" mean agreement with a post? People can create closed or private groups on Facebook and share and comment on ideas. If there are 7 members and 4 people like a post, does that mean the idea is accepted. We know that all seven members have "seen" the post, it has been "Seen by everyone". What if only 2 members "liked" the post. Social network decision support is very unstructured and asynchronous. Is that "good enough" to support business teams?
Last update: 2013-12-31 02:11
Author: Daniel Power
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