The management of knowledge in complex decision making environments

This paper investigates a framework for planning decision support systems [ 18] from a knowledge perspective The aim is to rethink the framework in order to make it useful for the planning of information systems as support systems for knowledge workers. The framework was built on a broad theoretical base from the field of organisational studies. It is based on the assumption that an understanding of the organisational context should guide the design and use of information systems. The four organisational contexts or environments are: "garbage can", "political", "rational" and "programme". These are investigated using a set of concepts from knowledge theory, including Polanyi [27, 28], Berger and Luckmann [3] and Ackoff [1]. Together the environments and the knowledge concepts form an extension of the framework. This framework is then tested on an empirical case. The problem is that an analysis using multiple perspectives tends to be too complex. The final result is a hypothesis concerning which of the concepts should be used given a certain environment. This could guide information systems planning processes by explaining when to use which concept.