An empirical investigation of ODSS impact on individuals and organizations

Organizational Decision Support Systems (ODSS) are large decision aiding systems, which provide organization-wide support for business processes. An ODSS shares some characteristics with other management support systems, but it has distinctly different objectives, scope and components. Its goal to support both the individual and organizational level decision processes may require unique development and management approaches. Several case studies have been conducted to address this issue. However, no systematic investigation has been conducted to determine factors that influence the successful development and use of ODSS. We designed this study to investigate ODSS impact both at the individual and organizational level based on several ODSS currently in use. Our findings indicate that in order to have a successful ODSS, management must pay attention to individual user needs and also have several organizational level coordinating mechanisms in place. User participation, support of management, and DSS system characteristics were found to be important determinants of ODSS success. Several factors at the organizational level, such as the use of steering committees and the extent of institutionalization of the system, were found to be correlated to ODSS success. The implications of these results for the management of ODSS and other organization-wide systems are discussed. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.