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Using data to improve decision making

8 九月, 2015 - 10:52

Most important management activities can be viewed from a decision making perspective. Within organizations (especially larger ones), numerous decisions are being made on a continuous basis. For example, decisions about how to design an assembly line in a production facility, and how to structure work tasks for employees working on the line, will have direct and substantial impacts on the efficiency and effectiveness of the use of resources (employees, production materials). Not surprisingly, many organizations have expended considerable resources to acquire or develop information systems that are designed to help improve the efficiency and effectiveness of organizational decision making.

A wide variety of terms have been used to describe information systems that are designed to support the decision making of organizational members. These include decision support systems (DSS), group decision support systems (GDSS), executive information systems (EIS), knowledge management systems (KMS), and business intelligence (BI). Additionally, the term expert system (ES) is often used to describe systems that attempt to augment human knowledge by providing access to reasoning used by experts in reaching their decisions.

On occasion, the term managerial support system or management support system (MSS) is used as an umbrella term to encompass these diverse (yet related) types of information systems (Benbasat and Nault, 1990; Clark et al., 2007). While each type of system has some unique aspect (e.g., DSS are designed to support one individual, while GDSS are used by groups; EIS are geared toward the unique monitoring and control needs of individuals that are higher in the organization; and so on), they also share some common elements. At their core, all are designed to improve decision making within organizations.

Rather than examining each of these related types of system in detail, we will focus on the functions that organizational members need to perform and decisions they need to make, and then show how information systems may be used to support them. In doing so, we’ll also see how different types of management support systems can come into play.