Global Decision Support - Essay Example

Global Decision Support (GDSS) of Introduction In the contemporary business and technological environment, organizations desperately require the competitive advantage to help ensure they remain afloat and ahead of their competitors. Interestingly, these competitive advantages are enjoyed best by organizations with sound decision-making processes, techniques, and tools. Decision Support Systems (DSSs) are among the most relied on strategies used by organizations to make effective decisions. That DSS tools are effective in managerial decision making processes implies managers must improve the tools’ capacities to work efficiently to yield the right information structure (Antunes et al., 2007). Thus the generation, design, implementation, interpretation and implementation of DSS tools should be done efficiently and competently to solve decision-making problems. A DSS system should thus serve as a competitive advantage that helps an organization to tackle decision-making problems based on consistent information and information structure and win markets. Background Generally, a Decision Support System (DSS) is a compilation of amalgamated software and hardware applications (tools, techniques, and models) used by an organization as the benchmark of decision making process. Since decision making requires the analysis of data, a DSS should be data-driven. The concepts of Business Intelligence (BI), Organizational Intelligence (OI), and Competitive Intelligence (CI), which encompass the processes, methodologies, and reporting tools central to decision support systems to report, monitor, and analyze data are also important in DSS and decision making (Antunes et al., 2007). This paper reviews literatures on the benefits and buy-in of global DSS, the processes of implementing global DSS, the ethical issues related to global DSS, and the possible ways by which global DSS may increase global partners. A global Decision Support System (GDSS) is a computer-based interactive system used by teams from different organizations, countries or regions to make decisions, solve problems, and make choices. Specifically, global DSS aims to support groups in the analysis of problem situations and in the performance of collective decision-making tasks. From its name global DSS is quite descriptive and is a mixture of systems that uses intricate communications infrastructures and quantitative models to support decision-making processes. Literature Review As a consequence of increased globalization and heightened competition in the business world, entrepreneurs have resorted to using the latest technologies to make vital business decisions (Lynch, 1994). Similarly, a lot of literary work has focused on decision making and its various techniques and tools such as DSS. According to most authors, there are numerous aspects of DSS that organizations and managers should consider when venturing into global DSS. Global DSS benefits, implementation, and ethical issues are among the most extensively covered aspects of DSS in literatures. Businesses enjoy numerous benefits by implementing global DSS. For instance, for quite a long time, organizations have struggled to find an electronic commercial application that would allow them to jointly decode and interpret information to allow them to make use of these decision making tools in the accompaniment of other organizations or business partners (Lynch, 1994). The first among the many benefits of global DSS is that it allows organizations to orient their resources towards providing managers with all the required information for strategic decision making. Global DSS offers organizations several other capabilities, including support for decision-making processes in ill-structured situations that lack full computerization and requires computer-based assistance for voluminous data accessibility and processing (Lynch, 1994). Global DSS also helps in the rapid acquisition of quantity and quality results for reaching decision by supporting the various stages of decision making. Importantly, global DSS encourages high-quality decision making by fostering decision making on the basis of integrating information and human judgment (Lynch, 1994). Global DSS also provides flexibility, making it accommodative for different decision-making styles besides facilitating the implementation of cross-departmental and group decisions. Implementation of a Global DSS In the implementation of global DSS, it is important that managers emphasize certain vital factors that would affect both the short- and long-term implementation of a DSS. First, all the pieces of software and hardware in a global DSS should be aligned with and relevant to business objectives. These tools should be related to organizational goals since an organization should obviously be committed to finding applications that would help it achieving its goals (Turban et al., 2010). Thus, it is necessary to design a bridge between the real time data in a DSS and the elements of making. Organizational objectives and plans and the technologies and the methods by which they are to be achieved should also be considered in the implementation of a global DSS (Martinsons & Davison, 2010). The organizational aspects must be analyzed and the recommended revision of the technological infrastructures for the DSS to be implemented executed. It is thus imperative that the current technological infrastructures of an organization are analyzed to avoid unnecessary costs and allow for the evaluation of the various available DSS options. Importantly, the human capital available for the running of the global DSS to be implemented should be addressed. In addition, it is essential to identify and define the nature and the number of the personnel intended to use or interfere with a global DSS. Similarly, the technological and administrative responsibilities of all personnel should be clearly defined by an analysis that involves all stakeholders so that the right parameters for structuring and implementing the global DSS are established (Martinsons & Davison, 2010). The other important consideration in DSS implementation is the financial situation of the enterprise in question. Specifically, the economical feasibility of a DSS project should be determined so that non-beneficial expenses are avoided. An economical analysis is thus necessary prior to implementation given that the main objective of a DSS project should be cost reduction. Through change strategies such as teamwork, best practices, training, planning, and communication and the right technical, economical, operational and human factor interventions, the implementation of a global DSS would go a long way in realizing the DSS and organizational objectives. Ethical Compromises of GDSS Deployment Contrary to the belief and assumption that DSS is ethically neutral, there are several ethical issues associated with building and using global DSS. In fact, both DSS users and builders encounter a lot of ethical issues and have to make certain ethical choices while dealing with computerized and non-computerized decision support systems. The first ethical issues in global DSS building and usage occurs during DSS proposal. For instance, making a choice whether to build or use a computerized decision support system could be an ethical issue in itself, making it imperative that organizations’ managements identify any critical ethical issues and challenges that DSS builders and users may be subjected to while interacting with DSS. There are several examples or incidents that show the various ways in which the deployment of global DSS may compromise ethics (Antunes et al., 2008). For an illustration, a builder of a global information or business intelligence system may opt to ignore the inclusion of key metric such as the weight of a prototype airplane, because the data is hard to capture and display. Eventually that metric may become a critical flaw, resulting in major cost overruns. Second, a DSS sponsor may have proposed the combining of sales and credit card data, resulting in concerns about the privacy rights of past customers, which will most likely be jeopardized. Third, a manager or a user of a data-driven DSS may notice a sales problem in a store and delve deeper into the underlying data and sees a large transaction by his wife and decides to confront the wife with this information. In addition to the above ethical issues, a global DSS based on knowledge may have its knowledge obviously outdated with no one ready to act and fix the problem. Any recommendations based on such global knowledge-driven DSS become increasingly erratic and international organizations and partners start to ignore results or decisions that are based on such a DSS. From the perspective of a global DSS builder, core principles and values, which play rather crucial roles organizational decision-making processes would be negatively affected by the above ethical errors (Power, 2002). Any assumptions that would result in negative ethical impacts on global DSS users should thus be avoided by DSS builders. How Global DSS May Increase the Presence of Global Partners In addition to covering all the ethical consideration, there are other mechanisms by which global DSS may increase an organization’s global partners. First, the ease with which a global DSS is implemented and allow non-technical users to handle it is an important factor in attracting more global partners (Davison et al., 2009). That is, the DSS need to be flexible, thus prompting those in need of the data therein to directly and easily deal with the system. Second, a global DSS should not restrict access to information to specific organizations or levels of management to attract more global partners. In other words, the resources should be dispersed to all the regions and organizations that need it. Widespread is thus a vital tool that would empower a DSS to distribute (Davison et al., 2009). A global DSS should also be a highly adaptive generator of decision support, easily used by professionals to design data support prototypes suited for various specific decision-making tasks executed by different international organizations. References Antunes, F., Costa, J. P., and Nunes, P., (2008). Ascertaining group decision auditing capabilities: proceedings of the group decision and negotiation (GDN) 2008. Coimbra, Portugal. Antunes, F., Melo, P., and Costa, J. P. (2007). "Information Management in Distributed Collaborative Systems: The Case of Collaboration Studio." European Journal of Operational Research, Volume 177, Issue 3, 16 March 2007, Pages 1385. Davison, R. M., Martinsons, M. G., Lo, H. W., and Li, Y. (2009). "The Ethics of IT Professionals in China", Communications of the ACM, 52(7), 155. Lynch, M. (1994). "Ethical Issues in Electronic Information Systems. Retrieved on May 30, 2012 from http://www.colorado.edu/geography/gcraft/notes/ethics/ethics_f.html Martinsons, M.G., and Davison, R. M. (2010). Globalization and information management strategy: cross-cultural perspectives", handbook of technology management. Wiley. Power, D. J. (2002). Decision support systems: concepts and resources for managers. Westport, CT: Greenwood/Quorum Books. Turban, E., Sharda, R., and Delen, D. (2010). Decision support and business intelligence systems, ninth edition. Prentice Hall. Read More