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Intelligent decision aids have been widely adopted by organizations in an effort to capture, retain and disseminate the knowledge of individuals within the organization. To date, these efforts have met with mixed results. Two primary limitations have been the usability of systems (users either cannot or do not wish to use systems) and the inability to transfer knowledge from such systems to less expert decision makers. Explanation capabilities have been perceived as a potential means for improving the effectiveness of such systems in terms of both usability and knowledge transfer. In this study, four advancements are put forth. First, a working prototype system for highly complex decision making is used as the foundation for implementing a full-scale, embedded explanation facility. Second, the development of the explanation facility is carefully grounded in the extant prescriptive literature on explanation types and delivery processes-including feedforward and feedback. Third, a development strategy is formulated and demonstrated as a generalized process of explanation development and integration. Fourth, high-level professional decision makers use the system and provide evaluative feedback on the usability and value of the explanation facility. Overall, the results of the development efforts and subsequent evaluation are very positive and provide a solid foundation for future research and practice efforts related to explanation provision within the context of intelligent systems. EXPLANATION IN AN INTELLIGENT DECISION AID 7 2. PRIOR RESEARCH ON EXPLANATIONS FOR INTELLIGENT DECISION AIDS 1 Described as Use of KBS [knowledge-based system] explanations in Figure 1 of Gregor and Benbasat (1999) and Figure 6 of Dhaliwal and Benbasat (1996). These figures provide a summary of the factors that are discussed in this paper.

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Decisions by insolvency experts are vital to the future of a company in financial difficulties and impact the financial returns to creditors and other stakeholders. This paper describes a generalized model of the decision-making processes used by insolvency experts when dealing with companies in financial distress. The model includes identification of high-level factors that are important in making insolvency decisions and how these factors are used in the decision-making processes of insolvency experts. In particular, financial and non-financial factors are required for judgments about relevant stakeholders and the future of a company. Validation experiments show a high degree of conformance between the model and a variety of actual cases. Abstract

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