Group Decision Making Process: Issues, IT solutions

1. Group Decision Making Process:Issues, IT solutions By Marcello Marcis

2. The Bounded Rationality Herbert Simon (1976) Identifying the Problem Accepting the Problem Collecting information Describing the Problem Searching for solutions or Alternatives Judgement Choice Acceptance (by stakeholders ) Execution Monitoring Feedback

3. The Group Decision Making in Organizations The challenge: • Making a choice implies that the chosen course of action has to be accepted by the stakeholders involved and it obliges them to comply with it in spite of the resistance to accept it: Corporate governance can create conflicts among stakeholders. • Even though the organizations are made by people with different beliefs, skills, perceptions of reality, in the end organizational decisions have to be unitary actions taken by a single individual – a manager or leader – or by a group.

4. Solving the conflict in the group The Consensus Decision Making: It is a process that not only seeks the agreement of most participants, but also the resolution or mitigation of minority objections. Consensus is usually defined as meaning both general agreement, and the process of getting to such agreement. Consensus decision-making is thus concerned primarily with that process. This process is nothing more but a bargaining process.

5. Solving the conflict Range voting: The option with the highest average is chosen. This method has experimentally been shown to produce the lowest regret rate among common voting methods, even when voters are strategic.

6. Solving the conflict The Majority Rule: It requires support from more than 50% of the members of the group. Thus, in here the consensus for the course of action is lower than with unanimity and there is a win-lose situation (winners and losers) like in the parliament.

7. Solving the Conflict Dictatorship: “I opened the doors for you! Showed you how the system works! The value of information! How to *get it*! Fulham oil! Brant resources! Geodynamics! And this is how you pay me back!” Gordon Gekko in Wall Street It happens when an individual, a leader, given his rank in the hierarchy of the organization decides for all the other members of the group.

8. Brainstorming • To be truly innovative, an organization must foster the flow of new ideas. • Brainstorming and other idea generation techniques were popularized during the early 1950s to assist organizations in the innovation process. Alex Osborne (1953), an advertising executive, developed the structured Brainstorming technique as a methodology for stimulating creative thought within a group setting. • Brainstorming offers help in figuring out alternatives to a certain course of action.

9. Issues in face to face Brainstorming Group Performance Inhibitors: • Fear of social disapproval from group members. • Anxiety about oral communication skills. • Presence of authority figure. • Use of time is limited by other group members. • Repetition of same response by a number of other group members (especially high status group members) leads to copying. From J. Nunamaker et al, Group decision support system for idea generation and issue analysis in organization planning 1984)

10. GDSS tools can help! • In the early 80s the studies made by J. F. Nunamaker arrives to the conclusion that computer brainstorming for strategic planning decisions stimulates task oriented behaviour, decreases group interactions andequalizes participation. • The use of technology changed the group process: by promoting anonymity and efficiency (parallel idea generation).

11. GDSS definition • A Group Decision Support System (GDSS) is an interactive, computer-based system that helps a team of decision-makers solve problems and make choices. GDSS are targeted to supporting groups in analyzing problem situations and in performing group decision-making tasks (cf., DeSanctis and Gallupe, 1987; Huber, 1984). The name is very descriptive. A GDSS is a hybrid system that uses an elaborate communications infrastructure and heuristic, and quantitative models to support decision-making.

12. A closer look

13. A closer look

14. GDSS TOOLS • They were originally implemented in the University of Arizona. • The large meetings were in meeting rooms with 40 seat s and a micro computer in each seat. • The facilitator of each meeting will first make the agenda of the meeting, Then the participants will type simultaneously in their ideas of the topic of discussion on the individual microcomputers next to them. The computer will sort the ideas, and then the participants will then vote or comment on which ideas they like or they dislike. In the course of the whole meeting, GDSS stores, categorizes and prints out all the ideas, comments and vote tallies, so that each of the meeting participants will get a summary of the meeting when it ends.

15. What was so innovative? • GDSS enabled meeting participants to simultaneously "talk", when the computer sorts and sends ideas to each of the terminal, all at the same time. That saved a tremendous amount of time. • This could consequently increase the productivity and efficiency of the group. The time-consuming benefit also had an added bonus: when productivity and efficiency in meetings increase, it was likely that the team spirit can be consolidated, resulting in an increase of the strength of binding among team members.

16. Besides • Under this GDSS, no one can dominate the meeting. This is because of another feature of GDSS. GDSS provides an anonymous scheme, Under this circumstance, no one really knows who is typing what. Because of this, not a single person can dominate the meetings. In the worst case, we might say "some ideas" are dominating the meeting, but this is perfectly fine because this is as a matter of fact an aim of the GDSS: to help meeting participants voice their opinions from an idea-oriented mindset.

17. GDSS Tools • GDSS aim at supporting a group to cooperate and work effectively together to reach its goals. • Purpose is to support and develop the whole group decision making process. • GDSS can improve the productivity of decision-making meetings, either – by speeding up the decision-making process or by improving the quality of the resulting decisions.

18. The GDSS as DSS tool type • Any decision maker individual or group needs to take examine the type of decision: • Programmed versus NonProgrammed decisions. Key elements of a GDSS: • Handle lots of data from various sources. • Report & presentation flexibility. • Text and graphics capabilities. • Support drill down analysis. • For instance, financial models can show the relationship among variable in investment analysis. The model base gives DSS users access to a variety of built-in models they can use, so users don’t need to write lengthy programs to create their own models. Often, model management software coordinates the use of models in a DSS.

19. The GDSS as DSS tool type • The key capabilities of a GDSS are: • Support all problem-solving phases • Support different decision frequencies • Ad hoc DSS • Institutional DSS • Support different problem structures: • Structured • Semi-structured or unstructured • Support various decision-making levels within the organization.

20. Conclusion • Identifying the Problem consulting dashboard • Accepting the Problem ... • Collecting Information DW, OLTP • Modelling the Problem (model-driven) DSS Decision conferencing • Searching for Alternatives Brainstorming GWSS • Judgement DSS, GDSS OLAP, Data Mining, SChoice DSS, GDSS • Acceptance / legitimation Decision conferencing • Execution BSC • Monitoring BSC, Dashboard • Feedback BSC (From CsabaCsáki – BIS IS6120 - Enterprise Business Intelligence Lecture’s notes)