Environmental factors affecting decision support system design

The development of a Decision Support System (DSS) that is truly responsive to user needs has proven to be a deceptively complex, error-prone, and expensive process. One of the problems seems to be a mismatch between the design approaches and the organizational design environments. Because of the mismatch, many systems which are developed cease to be used or are used for routine report generation rather than for direct support of decision makers. This paper addresses that problem by first, analyzing existing DSS design approaches and discussing their shortcomings; second, by examining the nature of organizational design environments; and third, by prescribing which design approaches are appropriate for the environmental factors that are identical.