We elaborate on the shifting of decision support systems towards social networking, which is based on the concepts of Web 2.0 and Semantic Web technology. As the characteristics of the relevant components are different from traditional decision support systems, we present necessary adaptations when adopting social networks for decision support within an organization. We also present organizational obstacles when adopting/using such systems and clues to overcome them. 1. Introduction The overall objective of decision support systems (DSSs), whether individual or group based, is to counterbalance decision makers’ intuition, against rational techniques or models (multicriteria decision-aiding methods for instance), in order to improve decision-making. As a side effect, using DSSs also appears to reduce decision time, enhance user satisfaction, improve the ability to explain the reasons for deciding and accepting those decisions (i.e., decision reconstruction [1]), and facilitate knowledge acquisition (see, for instance, [2–4], for further insights, as well as [5–7] for some of the process drawbacks). Decision-making can be seen as an organizational routine [8], traditionally consisting of an organized task, which requires the contribution of cooperative groups. According to [9], such groups have specific properties and they act in contexts that are different from the ones of negotiation, in the classic sense of that term. The characteristics that distinguish the two situations arise from differences in goals and objectives convergence, power relationships and interdependencies that are normally present, the possibilities of sharing information, and relevant behaviors (not to abandon a negotiation for instance). In the context of this work, a cooperative group is constituted by individuals who wish or need to reach a cooperative solution and that, therefore, are willing to contribute to the shared understanding of a problem [10]. To support decision-making, a large deal of work has been made since the earlier personal DSS. Literature on DSS thrived all over the years, with a great deal of prototypes for research demonstration of decision models or of enhanced collaboration functionalities, with only few, though remarkable, building their way into the market ([11–14], among many others). These systems followed the research advances in databases, artificial intelligence, operational research, psychology, and, especially regarding the focus of this paper, web development, which is supported by a group of technologies commonly known as Web 2.0 and Semantic
References
[1]
F. Antunes and J. P. Costa, “The missing link: theoretical reflections on decision reconstruction,” Portuguese Journal of Management Studies, vol. 15, no. 2, pp. 197–213, 2010.
[2]
A. Dennis, B. Haley, and R. Vandenberg, “A meta-analysis of effectiveness, efficiency, and participant satisfaction in GSS research,” in Proceedings of the Proceedings of the Seventeenth International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS '96), J. I. DeGross, S. Jarvenpaa, and A. Srinivasan, Eds., pp. 278–289, Cleveland, Ohio, USA, December 1996.
[3]
R. C. W. Kwok, J. Ma, and D. Vogel, “Effect of GSS and facilitation on knowledge restructuring,” in Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Siences (HICSS-33 '00), Computer Society Press, Big Island, Hawaii, USA, January 2000.
[4]
G.-J. Vreede, D. Vogel, G. Kolfschoten, and J. Wien, “Fifteen years of GSS in the field: a comparison across time and national boundaries,” in Proceedings of the 36th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS '03), Computer Society Press, January 2003.
[5]
D. Dufner, Y.-T. Park, O. Kwon, and Q. Peng, “Asynchronous team support: perceptions of the group problem solving process when using a cybercollaboratory,” in Proceedings of the Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS '02), Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos, CA, USA, January 2002.
[6]
P. Lowry, C. Albrecht, J. Lee, and J. Nunamaker, “User experiences in collaborative writing using Collaboratus, an Internet-based collaborative work,” in Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS '02), Computer Society Press, Big Island, Hawaii, USA, January 2002.
[7]
A. Massey, M. Weiss, and Y.-T. Hung, “Synchronizing pace in asynchronous global virtual project teams,” in Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS '02), Computer Society Press, Big Island, Hawaii, USA, January 2002.
[8]
M. S. Feldman and B. T. Pentland, “Reconceptualizing organizational routines as a source of flexibility and change,” Administrative Science Quarterly, vol. 48, no. 1, pp. 94–118, 2003.
[9]
L. C. Dias and J. N. Clímaco, “Dealing with imprecise information in group multicriteria decisions: a methodology and a GDSS architecture,” European Journal of Operational Research, vol. 160, no. 2, pp. 291–307, 2005.
[10]
F. Bezerra, P. Melo, and J. P. Costa, “Visual and interactive comparative analysis of individual opinions in group decision,” in Proceedings of the Proceedings of the Group Decision and Negotiation (GDN '08), J. N. Clímaco, G. E. Kersten, and J. P. Costa, Eds., pp. 149–150, Coimbra, Portugal, June 2008.
[11]
D. Arnott, “Decision support systems evolution: framework, case study and research agenda,” European Journal of Information Systems, vol. 13, no. 4, pp. 247–259, 2004.
[12]
D. Arnott and G. Pervan, “A critical analysis of decision support systems research,” Journal of Information Technology, vol. 20, no. 2, pp. 67–87, 2005.
[13]
G. Bafoutsou and G. Mentzas, “Review and functional classification of collaborative systems,” International Journal of Information Management, vol. 22, no. 4, pp. 281–305, 2002.
[14]
J. Fjermestad and S. R. Hiltz, “Case and field studies of group support systems: an empirical assessment,” in Proceedings of the 33rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS '00), Computer Society Press, Big Island, Hawaii, USA, January 1999.
[15]
C. Kousetti, D. E. Millard, and Y. Howard, “A study of ontology convergence in a Semantic Wiki,” in Proceedings of the 4th International Symposium on Wikis (WikiSym '08), Porto, Portugal, September 2008.
[16]
D. M. Boyd and N. B. Ellison, “Social network sites: definition, history, and scholarship,” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 210–230, 2007.
[17]
C. Dwyer, S. R. Hiltz, and G. Widmeyer, “Understanding development and usage of social networking sites: the social software performance model,” in Proceedings of the 41st Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS '08), Big Island, Hawaii, USA, January 2008.
[18]
L. S. L. Lai and E. Turban, “Groups formation and operations in the web 2.0 environment and social networks,” Group Decision and Negotiation, vol. 17, no. 5, pp. 387–402, 2008.
[19]
M. Pendergast and S. Hayne, “Groupware and social networks: will life ever be the same again?” Information and Software Technology, vol. 41, no. 6, pp. 311–318, 1999.
[20]
D. Richter, K. Riemer, and J. V. Brocke, “Internet social networking: research state of the art and implications for enterprise 2.0,” Wirtschaftsinformatik, vol. 53, no. 2, pp. 89–103, 2011.
[21]
M. A. Rodriguez, D. J. Steinbock, J. H. Watkins et al., “Smartocracy: social networks for collective decision making,” in Proceedings of the 40th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS '07), January 2007.
[22]
E. Turban, T. P. Liang, and S. P. J. Wu, “A framework for adopting collaboration 2.0 tools for virtual group decision making,” Group Decision and Negotiation, vol. 20, no. 2, pp. 137–154, 2011.
[23]
F. Antunes, J. P. Costa, and P. Ma？？s, “Ascertaining group decision auditing capabilities,” International Journal of Business and Systems Research, vol. 4, no. 3, pp. 246–263, 2010.
[24]
S. Poltrock and M. Handel, “Modeling collaborative behavior: foundations for collaboration technologies,” in Proceedings of the 42nd Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS '09), Computer Society Press, Big Island, Hawaii, USA, January 2009.
[25]
B. G. Glaser and A. L. Strauss, The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research, Aldine, Chicago, Ill, USA, 1967.
[26]
H. Simon, The New Science of Management Decision, Prentice Hall, Englewoods Cliffs, NJ, USA, 1977.
[27]
R. L. Cross and A. Parker, The Hidden Power of Social Networks: Understanding How Work Really Gets Done in Organizations, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, Mass, USA, 2004.
[28]
S. Wasserman and K. Faust, Social Network Analysis: Methods and Applications, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, Mass, USA, 1994.
[29]
J. L. Moreno, Sociometry, Experimental Method and the Science of Society. An Approach to a New Political Orientation, Beacon House, New York, NY, USA, 1951.
[30]
A. Harrer, J. Moskaliuk, J. Kimmerle, and U. Cress, “Visualizing Wiki-supported knowledge building: co-evolution of individual and collective knowledge,” in Proceedings of the 4th International Symposium on Wikis (WikiSym '08), Porto, Portugal, September 2008.
[31]
W. D. Nooy, A. Mrvar, and V. Batagelj, Exploratory Social Network Analysis with Pajek, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, Mass, USA, 2005.
[32]
E. Turban, J. E. Aronson, and T. P. Liang, Decision Support Systems and Intelligent Systems, Pearson Education, Upper Saddle River, NJ, USA, 2005.
[33]
F. Antunes and J. P. Costa, “Beyond decisions (or to decisions and beyond!): an outline of building blocks for a decision support and reconstruction framework,” in Proceedings of the Recent Advances in Business Administration: 5th WSEAS International Conference on Business Administration (ICBA '11), A. Zemliak and N. Mastorakis, Eds., pp. 32–37, WSEAS Press, Puerto Morelos, Mexico, 2011.
[34]
M. Turoff, S. R. Hiltz, M. Bieber, J. Fjermestad, and A. Rana, “Collaborative discourse structures in computer mediated group communications,” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, vol. 4, no. 4, pp. 1050–1079, 1999.
[35]
J. Bentahar, B. Moulin, and M. Bélanger, “A taxonomy of argumentation models used for knowledge representation,” Artificial Intelligence Review, vol. 33, no. 3, pp. 211–259, 2010.
[36]
W. Kunz and H. Rittel, Issues as Elements of Information Systems, 1970.
[37]
K. Maleewong, C. Anutariya, and V. Wuwongse, “A collective intelligence approach to collaborative knowledge creation,” in Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Semantics, Knowledge, and Grid (SKG '08), pp. 64–70, December 2008.
[38]
W. Abramowicz, D. Fensel, and U. Frank, “Semantics and web 2.0 technologies to support business process management,” Business & Information Systems Engineering, vol. 1, pp. 1–2, 2010.
[39]
T. O’Reilly, “What is Web 2.0?—Design patterns and business models for the next generation of software,” 2005, http://oreilly.com/web2/archive/what-is-web-20.html.
[40]
T. O’Reilly, “Web 2.0 Compact Definition: Trying Again,” 2006, http://radar.oreilly.com/2006/12/web-20-compact-definition-tryi.html.
[41]
D. M. Boyd, “The significance of social software,” in Proceedings of the BlogTalks Reloaded. Social Software—Research & Cases, T. N. Burg and J. Schmidt, Eds., pp. 15–30, Books on Demand GmbH, Norderstedt, Germany, October 2006.
[42]
T. Berners-Lee, J. Hendler, and O. Lassila, “The semantic web,” Scientific American, vol. 284, no. 5, pp. 34–43, 2001.
[43]
O. Lassila and J. Hendler, “Embracing “Web 3.0”,” IEEE Internet Computing, vol. 11, no. 3, pp. 90–93, 2007.
[44]
M. Padula, A. Reggiori, and G. Capetti, “Managing collective knowledge in the web 3.0,” in Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Evolving Internet (INTERNET '09), pp. 33–38, August 2009.
[45]
J. Hendler, “Web 3.0 emerging,” Computer, vol. 42, no. 1, pp. 111–113, 2009.
[46]
M. M. I. Pattal, L. Yuan, and Z. Jianqiu, “Web 3.0: a real personal Web! more opportunities & more threats,” in Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Next Generation Mobile Applications, Services and Technologies (NGMAST '09), IEEE Computer Society Press, Cardiff, UK, September 2009.
[47]
A. P. McAfee, “Enterprise 2.0: the dawn of emergent collaboration,” MIT Sloan Management Review, vol. 47, no. 3, pp. 21–28, 2006.
[48]
C. Hirsch, J. Hosking, J. Grundy, T. Chaffe, D. MacDonald, and Y. Halytskyy, “The visual wiki: a new metaphor for knowledge access and management,” in Proceedings of the 42nd Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS '09), Computer Society Press, Big Island, Hawaii, USA, January 2009.
[49]
N. Gehrke and P. Wolf, “Towards audit 2.0—A web 2.0 community platform for auditors,” in Proceedings of the 43rd Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-43 '10), January 2010.
[50]
M. Robertson, “Young “netizens” creating public citizenship in cyberspace,” International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education, vol. 18, no. 4, pp. 287–293, 2009.
[51]
H.-F. Lin, “Effects of extrinsic and intrinsic motivation on employee knowledge sharing intentions,” Journal of Information Science, vol. 33, no. 2, pp. 135–149, 2007.
[52]
S. Grabner-Kr？uter, “Web 2.0 social networks: the role of trust,” Journal of Business Ethics, vol. 90, no. 4, pp. 505–522, 2009.
[53]
S. A. Munson, “Motivating and enabling organizational memory with a workgroup Wiki,” in Proceedings of the 4th International Symposium on Wikis (WikiSym '08), Porto, Portugal, September 2008.
[54]
R. O. Briggs, G. J. de Vreede, J. F. Nunamaker, and D. Tobey, “ThinkLets: achieving predictable, repeatable patterns of group interaction with Group Support Systems,” in Proceedings of the 34th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (GSS '01), p. 9, Tucson, Ariz , USA, January 2001.
[55]
J. Fjermestad and S. R. Hiltz, “Group support systems: a descriptive evaluation of case and field studies,” Journal of Management Information Systems, vol. 17, no. 3, pp. 115–159, 2001.
[56]
D. Schneckenberg, “Web 2.0 and the shift in corporate governance from control to democracy,” Knowledge Management Research and Practice, vol. 7, no. 3, pp. 234–248, 2009.
[57]
J. Grudin and E. S. Poole, “Wikis at work: success factors and challenges for sustainability of enterprise wikis,” in Proceedings of the 6th International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration (WikiSym '10), Gdansk, Poland, July 2010.
[58]
T. F. Gordon and N. Karacapilidis, “Zeno argumentation framework,” in Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law (ICAIL '97), pp. 10–18, Melbourne, Australia, July 1997.
[59]
C. Rinner, “Argumentation maps: GIS-based discussion support for on-line planning,” Environment and Planning B, vol. 28, no. 6, pp. 847–863, 2001.
[60]
J. A. A. Sillince and M. H. Saeedi, “Computer-mediated communication: problems and potentials of argumentation support systems,” Decision Support Systems, vol. 26, no. 4, pp. 287–306, 1999.
[61]
N. Streitz, J. Hannemann, and M. Thüring, “From ideas and arguments to hyperdocuments: travelling through activity spaces,” in Proceedings of the 2nd annual ACM conference on Hypertext (HYPERTEXT '89), pp. 343–364, Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1989.
[62]
S. Toulmin, The Uses of Argument—Updated Edition, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, Mass, USA, 2003.
[63]
M. Angelaccio, B. Buttarazzi, and M. Patrignanelli, “Graph use to visualize Web search results: myWish 3.0,” in Proceedings of the 11th International Conference Information Visualization (IV '07), pp. 245–250, July 2007.
[64]
W. Chung, H. Chen, and J. F. Nunamaker, “A visual framework for knowledge discovery on the web: an empirical study of business intelligence exploration,” Journal of Management Information Systems, vol. 21, no. 4, pp. 57–84, 2005.
[65]
A. Wingkvist, W. L？we, M. Ericsson, and R. Lincke, “Analysis and visualization of information quality of technical documentation,” in Proceedings of the 4th European Conference on Information Management and Evaluation (ECIME '09), pp. 388–396, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal, September 2010.
