Decision Aids – Expert and Decision
Support Systems
Research Paper
Alycia Jones
03/26/2017
ACG 4401
Robert Tennant
Executive Summary
Regardless of the organization or the position within the company each
employee is faced with having to make decisions. The decision-making process can
loosely be defined as the process of choosing a course of action over possible
alternatives. Depending upon the level of hierarchy within an organization, problems
and decisions to be made can sometimes be strenuous. In efforts to alleviate stress that
managers can experience, decision aids have been created and implemented. With the
implementation decision makers are presented the opportunity to create precise and
assured choices. These aids vary in types with the ability to be tailored to specific
organizations and meet certain needs. This paper will focus primarily on two widely
known and utilized decision aids.
Expert system being one that enforces artificial intelligence to acquire expert
human knowledge and compile it into a specialized database. This provides decision
makers with dependable solutions that can easily be implemented with clear directions.
Although equipped with expert knowledge, faults can still be found with this system and
should be explored further when making choices. Decision support systems play the
role of providing managers with the data needed to attain successful resolutions.
Decision makers gain a sense of confidence in choices made knowing information
provided derives from various reliable sources. With the gap between the two of either
being able to provide information or provide a solution, integrating them seems like a
great idea. However, being able to integrate expert systems and decision support
systems doesn’t necessarily establish the ideal decision aid. Each organization is
different and must consider the time it could take to implement such change and to
which level or extent should the systems be integrated. The diversity levels of decision
aids being available to decision makers gives the opportunity to tailor, specialize and
implement a decision aid that promotes success.
Introduction
Successful organizations often establish goals that management strategically aim
to achieve effectively. Quite a few roles are required for management to acquire these
goals such as informational, interpersonal and decision making. Decision making plays
a key role in making choices that directly affect the organization. Without adequate
resources and tools to make these decisions, accomplishing those goals can prove to
be problematic. One of the biggest fears faced by an organization isn’t necessarily
failure but more so not knowing how to prepare for, handle and recoup from failure.
Chief executive officers, managers, employees and business owners are often faced
with the challenge of having to make perpetual imperative decisions to keep a company
successful. These decisions range from a variety of structure levels revolving around
how to operate, whom the target market should be, budgets or creating competitive
pricing. Even simple choices like hours of operation or scheduling of employees can
produce a load of difficulties. Without being fully educated, prepared and equipped to
make these choices, decision makers can often be left in the dark, resulting in making
choices that have the potential to lead to grave consequences.
However, there are tools known as decision aids that can be adapted to prepare
decision makers with information, data, statistics and solutions to make effective
choices. Olson defines decision aids as a computer based system that analyzes and
outputs data to assist in making choices when an immeasurable number of likelihoods
are available (1). In other words, decisions aids are derived from various computer
systems entailing important and vital data that can support decisions makers in making
critical organizational choices from countless possibilities given.
A decision aid can sometimes be something as simple as research from a survey
that was conducted or as intensive as a software or system that is designed to collect
specific real-time information and provide essential data to solve critical problems.
Some types of decision aids could be standardized reporting templates, questionnaires,
risk factor analysis, fraud assessment tools, statistical or even simulated aids.
Moreover, just having the tools available isn’t suitable, decision makers also encounter
the struggle of differentiating between which tools are beneficial for their organization as
every tool can be tailored to each organizational need. This report intends to provide
