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several aspects of decision-making in organiza-
tions. According to Power (2002), a decision
support system (DSS) can be of five types, with
respect to the way it assists users:
tion of the concept of SDSS to fit the characteristics
of organizations appears as a promising research
avenue. This chapter extends the results of previ-
ous research in the subject, which can be found
in Garrido and Faria (2008).
When considering the import of the social
dimension in organizational decision, one is led
to acknowledge the fundamental role of conversa-
tions among people in decision processes. If con-
versations do not occur, organizational decisions
are taken in an absolute individual fashion, or are
taken by automatic devices. These no-conversation
modes have their usefulness, but it is hard to deny
that, from some level up of decision difficulty,
conversations among people are necessary for
good decisions, if not only for decisions, and that
people's practice expresses such necessity .
In fact, people tend to enter in conversations
with other people, formally or informally, when
they face a decision that appears too difficult to be
taken alone or that may have a significant impact
on the members of a collective. Therefore, one
can see conversations as the “decision support
system of last resort” or, better, the “top-level
decision support system”. It makes sense to ask
for a type of information system that supports con-
versations within processes of decision-making,
acknowledging the unique and top-level function
of conversation in decision processes. I will call
conversation-oriented decision support system
(CODSS) an information system of such type.
The concept of CODSS intersects the concept
of Group Decision Support System (GDSS) but
attempts to go further. GDSSs (Gray, 2008) sup-
port groups of people in an organization who
meet frequently or work together in a project and
must take decisions. Their role is to facilitate the
decision-making for the group given a number of
issues that must be considered. In this way, design
of GDSSs has as a goal to make conversations
more effective in leading to decisions and, in latest
developments, to lift restrictions of same time or
same space for the decision process to occur or go
on. In this respect, a GDSS also is a CODSS. Yet,
Communication-driven
Data-driven
Document-driven
Knowledge-driven
Model-driven
This classification does not exhaust all possi-
bilities. Turoff and co-workers (2002) introduced
the concept of Social Decision Support System
(SDSS) as a type of information system with first
objective “to facilitate the integration of diverse
views into a growing knowledge base.” Moreover,
its “design embodies the hope that modern human
networking technology can be configured and
used to allow the emergence of a collective human
intelligence by very large groups of individuals.”
A SDSS is envisaged as a DSS that allows the
contributions and cooperation of a large number
of people, with no special structuring requisites,
to produce useful decisions on problems of wide
interest. In the limit, one can formally enlarge
the concept of SDSS to include the support of
some conceivable decision by some conceivable
population.
In such generality of possible applications,
one stands out of special interest: organizational
decision . Organizations are the social tools through
which people create and access wealth, in its many
forms. Therefore, the efficiency and success of
organizations are a necessary condition for the
well-being of people and societies. The efficiency
and success of an organization depends critically
on the quality of its decision processes. Arguments
based on collective intelligence (Garrido, 2008)
pinpoint the importance of the social dimension
in decision-making. Grant (1996) also supports
decentralization of decision-making based on the
input of relevant knowledge being a critical factor
for decision quality. Consequently, the specializa-
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