Psychological climate and decision-making performance in a GDSS context

We studied how psychological climate can influence performance of members in groups that interact using Group Decision Support Systems (GDSS). Drawing on theories in psychology, we conducted an experiment to examine the impact of psychological climate (the individual's perceptions of the environment) on decision-making performance. Controlling for settings of GDSS session, we found that individual performance depended on two dimensions of the psychological climate. First, GDSS users perceiving a higher level of psychological safety made more effective and efficient decisions. Second, GDSS users perceiving higher level of psychological meaningfulness made better decisions if they had a clear understanding of the decision goal. Our study therefore highlighted the importance of individual psychological perceptions in a GDSS context. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.