Automating Guidance and Response for Group Decision-Making

目前计算机和信息技术的进步表明，将自动化系统与诸如自我管理的小组和团队等其他管理安排结合起来的机会越来越大。这个项目探索了构建一个自动化的计算机化的群体决策支持系统(GDSS)的可能性，以帮助群体更有效地管理他们的决策过程。理想情况下，这样的系统将为一个群体提供指导，诊断问题和机会，并具有应对和干预能力。目前的理论和研究提供了大量的规则和发现，但没有一个完整的框架或模型来支持这一努力。本研究发展了群体决策过程的形式化表征。利用这一表述，该项目确定了区分不同类型决策任务的有效和无效决策过程的线索。该研究还探讨了GDSS的指导和响应对群体决策的影响，以及它相对于促进或其他“人”形式的指导的比较优势。开发和测试该模型的数据来自实验室实验和来自两个组织的大量录制的团队会议。这项工作的一个明显延伸是全球决策支持系统的原型；然而，该项目更直接的贡献是关于使用群体过程包容性理论进行群体决策的基本知识，该理论强调关键内容和过程变量及其相互关系。

Current advances in computer and information technologies suggest a growing opportunity to combine automated systems and other management arrangements such as self-managed groups and teams. This project explores the possibilities of constructing an automated computerized group decision support system (GDSS) to help groups manage their decision-making processes more effectively. Ideally such a system would provide guidance for a group, diagnose problems and opportunities and have response and intervention capabilities. Current theory and research provide a body of rules and findings, but no integrative framework or model to underpin such an effort. This study develops a formal representation of group decision-making processes. Using this representation, the project identifies cues which discriminate between effective and ineffective decision-making processes for different types of decision tasks. The study also addresses the impacts of GDSS guidance and response on group decision making and its comparative advantages to facilitation or other "human" forms of guidance. Data to develop and test the model come from laboratory experiments and a large set of recorded team meetings from two organizations. An obvious extension of this effort is a prototype GDSS; however, the more immediate contribution of the project is basic knowledge about group decision making using an inclusive theory of group processes which emphasizes key content and process variables and their interrelations.