Toward effective group decision making: Integrating group support systems into the accounting environment

Contemporary business practice is increasingly mandating the use of group decision making in order to optimize decision outcomes. While the accounting and auditing domains have long relied on group and team processes, this contemporary emphasis is leading to even greater reliance on such groups to make key accounting and auditing decisions. Much of the motivation toward increased reliance on group decision making has been derived from emerging group meetings. This paper overviews the literature on group support systems and provides a framework for future research directed toward increasing the understanding as to how group technologies can be used to improve accounting and/or auditing decision making, as well as the organizational and individual impact of such system usage.