An examination of four GDSS experiments

Abstract

Group decision support systems (GDSS) have been offered as an approach to dealing with the increasing com plexity of organizational environments in post-industrial soci cty. GDSS development and research enjoy a recent popularity in the academic community. with many US universities having GDSS facilities. GDSS'S can vary greatly from each other, how ever. They can differ in such basic respects as facility configu ration. software tools supported, and type of facilitation. The experiments designed to test the effects of GDSS also differ from each other, along many dimensions The net result is that findings from various GDSS expermients are not strictly comparable. This paper illustrates the differences in GDSS and GDSS expertments by examining four recently published GDSS experiments. It is recommended that the general grouping together of various systems under the term GDSS be re-ex amined It is also recommended that researchers take care in generalizing the results across GDSS studies.