Decision Support in Participatory Contexts

Organizing the participation of multiple stakeholders in decision processes is now a widespread request with a visible consequence being the expansion of the analyst's role from problem solver to facilitator of stakeholder interactions. Within this evolutionary movement, this article claims that an analyst creates the organisation through which the set of stakeholders involved in the decision process interact. This article also claims that the ability of this organisation to fit contextual requirements is of utmost importance for the success of an analyst's intervention. This article is organised to support these two claims. Firstly, it describes the terms of organisational design and the mechanisms through which it may influence the decision processes. Secondly, the authors review how these aspects are already discussed within OR/MS literature so as to highlight current limitations and future possibilities for greater investigation of the place and role of organizational design in OR/MS research and practice.

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A Participatory Approach for Analyzing and Modeling Decision Processes

Decision Support Systems in Agriculture, Food and the Environment - Advances in Environmental Engineering and Green Technologies ◽

10.4018/978-1-61520-881-4.ch007 ◽

2011 ◽

pp. 138-154 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Kathrin Kirchner ◽

Ivonne Erfurth ◽

Sarah Möckel ◽

Tino Gläßer ◽

André Schmidt

Keyword(s):

Decision Support ◽

Decision Process ◽

Business Processes ◽

Participatory Approach ◽

Problem Area ◽

Decision Processes ◽

Planning Decisions ◽

Modeling Process ◽

Cooperative Partner

Most decision analytic research does not focus on initial steps of modeling and mostly concentrates on selecting preexisting algorithms. In this chapter we present how we can formalize decision intensive business processes based on a case study on a Decision Support System (DSS) for cultivation planning. Decisions in this problem area depend notably on expertise and experience acquired by the farmer. As a first step the decision process of the agriculturist needs to be explored, analyzed and documented. Afterwards all information and data, which leads up to a decision, will be collected, systemized and grouped. We will apply user participative techniques that integrate the farmer as a cooperative partner into the modeling process. The outcome of this modeling leads to a formalized model later on. On account of this approach the DSS will represent the real decision process of the farmer and increases trust in the decisions suggested by the system.

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An Integrated Decision Support System for Academic Effort Planning and Review

Journal of Educational Technology Systems ◽

10.2190/cqqy-gtla-ut7b-y0jf ◽

1986 ◽

Vol 15 (2) ◽

pp. 159-170

Author(s):

Chen-Hua Chung ◽

Jimmy D. F. Chen

Keyword(s):

Decision Support ◽

Decision Support System ◽

Support System ◽

Decision Process ◽

Decision Processes ◽

Academic Effort

Although academic effort planning and faculty merit review are done annually, they are by no means routine and structured tasks. Many studies have dealt with aiding the decision process related to the above tasks. Unfortunately, these studies or models are either oversimplified or too narrow in scope. This study develops a decision support system (DSS) which integrates and supports the decision processes of academic effort planning, merit review, and related activities. The support system is developed based on the concept that a DSS is a network of subsystem interfaces.

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Beyond RoboDebt

10.4018/978-1-6684-3694-3.ch013 ◽

2022 ◽

pp. 236-262

Author(s):

Michael D'Rosario ◽

Carlene D'Rosario

Keyword(s):

Decision Support ◽

Expert Systems ◽

Systematic Error ◽

Decision Support Systems ◽

Support Systems ◽

Decision Processes ◽

High Stake ◽

Robotic Process Automation ◽

Potential Problems

Automated decision support systems with high stake decision processes are frequently controversial. The Online Compliance Intervention (herewith “OCI” or “RoboDebt”) is a system of compliance implemented with the intention to facilitate automatic issuance of statutory debt notices to individuals, taking a receipt of welfare payments and exceeding their entitlement. The system appears to employ rudimentary data scraping and expert systems to determine whether notices should be validly issued. However, many individuals that take receipt of debt notices assert that they were issued in error. The commentary on the system has resulted in a lot of conflation of the system with other system types and caused many to question the role of decision of support systems in public administration given the potentially deleterious impacts of such systems for the most vulnerable. The authors employ a taxonomy of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) issues, to review the OCI and RPA more generally. This paper identifies potential problems of bias, inconsistency, procedural fairness, and overall systematic error. This research also considers a series of RoboDebt specific issues regarding contractor arrangements and the potential impact of the system for Australia's Indigenous population. The authors offer a set of recommendations based on the observed challenges, emphasizing the importance of moderation, independent algorithmic audits, and ongoing reviews. Most notably, this paper emphasizes the need for greater transparency and a broadening of criteria to determine vulnerability that encompasses, temporal, geographic, and technological considerations.

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Conversation-Oriented Decision Support Systems for Organizations

Data Mining ◽

10.4018/978-1-4666-2455-9.ch071 ◽

2013 ◽

pp. 1376-1389

Author(s):

Paulo Garrido

Keyword(s):

Decision Making ◽

Decision Support ◽

Decision Support System ◽

Decision Support Systems ◽

Support System ◽

Decision Process ◽

Support Systems ◽

Decision Processes ◽

Group Decision Support Systems ◽

Compound Decision

This chapter proposes concepts for designing and developing decision support systems that acknowledge, explore and exploit the fact that conversations among people are the top-level “supporting device” for decision-making. The goal is to design systems that support, configure and induce increasingly effective and efficient decision-making conversations. This includes allowing and motivating participation in decision-making conversations of any people who may contribute positively to decision-making and to the quality of its outcomes. The proposal sees the sum total of decisions being taken in an organization as the global decision process of the organization. The global decision process of the organization is structured in decision processes corresponding to organizational domains. Each organizational domain has associated a unit decision process. If the organizational domain contains organizational sub-domains, then its compound decision process is the union and composition of its unit decision process and the unit decision processes of its sub-domains. The proposal can be seen as extending, enlarging and integrating group decision support systems into an organization-wide system. The resulting organizational decision support system, by its conversational nature, may become the kernel decision support system of an organization or enterprise. In this way, the global decision process of the organization may be made explicit and monitored. It is believed that this proposal is original.

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Decision making with support of artificial intelligence

Agricultural Economics (Zemědělská ekonomika) ◽

10.17221/5124-agricecon ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 51 (No. 9) ◽

pp. 385-388

Author(s):

I. Rábová ◽

V. Konečný ◽

A. Matiášová

Keyword(s):

Artificial Intelligence ◽

Decision Making ◽

Decision Support ◽

Decision Process ◽

Process Model ◽

Decision Processes ◽

Enterprise Information ◽

Enterprise Information Systems ◽

Software Modules ◽

Competition Ability

  Development of software modules for decision support is currently a basic trend in the creation of enterprise Information Systems (IS). The IS is basically a support system of the enterprise Decision System, therefore we can regard it as a very important factor of the competition ability and enterprise prosperity. Conventional IS modules provide the enterprise managers a lot of useful information. Nevertheless, own decision process in view of difficulty, complexity or creation disability of decision process model is very often problematic. This contribution is oriented by its content to appropriate choice realization of modules for support decision processes by using of artificial intelligence methods.      

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Beyond RoboDebt

International Journal of Strategic Decision Sciences ◽

10.4018/ijsds.2020040101 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 11 (2) ◽

pp. 1-24

Author(s):

Michael D'Rosario ◽

Carlene D'Rosario

Keyword(s):

Decision Support ◽

Public Administration ◽

Indigenous Population ◽

Support Systems ◽

Decision Processes ◽

Process Automation ◽

High Stake ◽

Potential Problems ◽

Potential Impact

Automated decision support systems with high stake decision processes are frequently controversial. The Online Compliance Intervention (herewith “OCI” or “RoboDebt”) is a system of compliance implemented with the intention to facilitate automatic issuance of statutory debt notices to individuals, taking a receipt of welfare payments and exceeding their entitlement. The system appears to employ rudimentary data scraping and expert systems to determine whether notices should be validly issued. However, many individuals that take receipt of debt notices assert that they were issued in error. The commentary on the system has resulted in a lot of conflation of the system with other system types and caused many to question the role of decision of support systems in public administration given the potentially deleterious impacts of such systems for the most vulnerable. The authors employ a taxonomy of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) issues, to review the OCI and RPA more generally. This paper identifies potential problems of bias, inconsistency, procedural fairness, and overall systematic error. This research also considers a series of RoboDebt specific issues regarding contractor arrangements and the potential impact of the system for Australia's Indigenous population. The authors offer a set of recommendations based on the observed challenges, emphasizing the importance of moderation, independent algorithmic audits, and ongoing reviews. Most notably, this paper emphasizes the need for greater transparency and a broadening of criteria to determine vulnerability that encompasses, temporal, geographic, and technological considerations.

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Beyond RoboDebt

Research Anthology on Decision Support Systems and Decision Management in Healthcare, Business, and Engineering ◽

10.4018/978-1-7998-9023-2.ch072 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1512-1538

Author(s):

Michael D'Rosario ◽

Carlene D'Rosario

Keyword(s):

Decision Support ◽

Expert Systems ◽

Systematic Error ◽

Decision Support Systems ◽

Support Systems ◽

Decision Processes ◽

High Stake ◽

Robotic Process Automation ◽

Potential Problems

Automated decision support systems with high stake decision processes are frequently controversial. The Online Compliance Intervention (herewith “OCI” or “RoboDebt”) is a system of compliance implemented with the intention to facilitate automatic issuance of statutory debt notices to individuals, taking a receipt of welfare payments and exceeding their entitlement. The system appears to employ rudimentary data scraping and expert systems to determine whether notices should be validly issued. However, many individuals that take receipt of debt notices assert that they were issued in error. The commentary on the system has resulted in a lot of conflation of the system with other system types and caused many to question the role of decision of support systems in public administration given the potentially deleterious impacts of such systems for the most vulnerable. The authors employ a taxonomy of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) issues, to review the OCI and RPA more generally. This paper identifies potential problems of bias, inconsistency, procedural fairness, and overall systematic error. This research also considers a series of RoboDebt specific issues regarding contractor arrangements and the potential impact of the system for Australia's Indigenous population. The authors offer a set of recommendations based on the observed challenges, emphasizing the importance of moderation, independent algorithmic audits, and ongoing reviews. Most notably, this paper emphasizes the need for greater transparency and a broadening of criteria to determine vulnerability that encompasses, temporal, geographic, and technological considerations.

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Behavioral issues in decision problems: the role of information

Journal of Mathematical Economics and Finance ◽

10.14505/jmef.v4.2(7).02 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 4 (2) ◽

pp. 27

Author(s):

Viviana VENTRE

Keyword(s):

Operational Research ◽

Decision Processes ◽

Decision Models ◽

Decision Problems ◽

Problem Solver ◽

Behavioral Issues ◽

Individual Choices ◽

Role Of Information ◽

Modelling Process

Operational research (OR) might exhibit a partial perspective in modelling decisional processes as rational processes, because individual choices are strictly influenced by cognitive and motivational biases which can be different among people and for each person in dierent situation. We point out that the level of information of each problem solver play an important role in causing inconsistent preferences, and we demonstrate that only about strict conditions decision models coincide with real choices, because only in particular cases the optimum and rational decision matches with the real one. Moreover, cognitive and motivational biases influence also the modeler in the process of modelling. Behavioral Operational Research (BOR) studies the influence of behavioral issues in the modelling process, to avoid such kinds of biases and create eficient models to define choices in similar decision processes.

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Conversation-Oriented Decision Support Systems for Organizations

Advances in Business Information Systems and Analytics - Enterprise Information Systems Design, Implementation and Management ◽

10.4018/978-1-61692-020-3.ch008 ◽

2010 ◽

pp. 118-131 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Paulo Garrido

Keyword(s):

Decision Making ◽

Decision Support ◽

Decision Support System ◽

Decision Support Systems ◽

Support System ◽

Decision Process ◽

Support Systems ◽

Decision Processes ◽

Group Decision Support Systems ◽

Compound Decision

This chapter proposes concepts for designing and developing decision support systems that acknowledge, explore and exploit the fact that conversations among people are the top-level “supporting device” for decision-making. The goal is to design systems that support, configure and induce increasingly effective and efficient decision-making conversations. This includes allowing and motivating participation in decision-making conversations of any people who may contribute positively to decision-making and to the quality of its outcomes. The proposal sees the sum total of decisions being taken in an organization as the global decision process of the organization. The global decision process of the organization is structured in decision processes corresponding to organizational domains. Each organizational domain has associated a unit decision process. If the organizational domain contains organizational sub-domains, then its compound decision process is the union and composition of its unit decision process and the unit decision processes of its sub-domains. The proposal can be seen as extending, enlarging and integrating group decision support systems into an organization-wide system. The resulting organizational decision support system, by its conversational nature, may become the kernel decision support system of an organization or enterprise. In this way, the global decision process of the organization may be made explicit and monitored. It is believed that this proposal is original.

Download Full-text