Technologies for Improving Group Decision making

Abstract

This chapter focuses on techniques and technologies to aid groups in making decisions, with an emphasis on computer-based support. It is now customary for many office workers to regularly meet colleagues and clients in virtual meetings using videoconferencing platforms, which enable participants to carry out tasks in a manner quite similar to a face-to-face meeting. The development of computer-based platforms to facilitate group tasks can be traced back to the 1960s, and while they support group communication, they do not directly support group decision making. In this chapter we distinguish four technologies developed to provide support to group decisions, clustered into two main traditions. Technologies in the taskoriented tradition are mainly concerned with enabling participants to complete tasks to solve the group's decision problem via computer-supported communications. Group Decision Support Systems and social software technologies comprise the task-oriented tradition.Alternately, in the model-driven tradition, participants use computers to build and use a model that acts as a referent to communicate, mostly verbally, about the group's decision problem. Systems modeling and decision modeling technologies constitute the model-driven tradition.This chapter sketches the history and guiding ideas of both traditions, and describes their associated technologies. Our discussion centers on whether increased availability of online tools will also lead to increased use of group decision support technologies, and the differential impact of communication and decision support.terms technology, technique and tool in specific ways. Technology will refer to a set of techniques and tools plus the guidelines, principles, or assumptions needed to implement and use those. Technique will refer to a set of well-described activities (e.g. Nominal Group Technique). Finally, tool will refer to an artefact (e.g., computer software) that can assist in the deployment of a technique.An influential characterization of levels of group decision-making support is offered by DeSanctis and Gallupe (1987), and may serve to give a first overview of the types of technologies, tecniques and tools available. Level 1 decision support removes communication barriers by offering technical features such as electronic messaging, anonymous gathering, display of ideas on a shared screen, and anonymous clustering and voting. Level 1 tools are similar to videoconferencing in that they facilitate information exhange, but they can also include additional features that directly support decision making, such as anonymous gathering, clustering, and prioritization of ideas. By more fully capturing elements of the discussion, a group memory is created that participants can refer to during and after the meeting. Level 2 decision support adds group decision techniques (e.g., Nominal Group Technique, Delphi). Level 2 tools include decision models to support techniques such as Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis. Level 3 decision support employs machine-induced group co...