INFORMATION STRUCTURES AND COGNITIVE STRATEGIES IN DECISION-MAKING ON SYSTEMS-DEVELOPMENT

Effective decision-making is vital to the development of technological innovations such as industrial computer systems. Eighteen managers participated in an experiment carried out in real industrial settings using real decision tasks. Both simultaneous verbal protocols and information search techniques were used to ascertain the effects of different structures of information displays upon the process of decision-making for systems development. The results demonstrated six categories of cognitive operators and strategies in decision-making. It was also shown that dimensional information of human-computer interface facets was more important for decision-making, and that different information search patterns and ccognitive strategies were adopted under different information structures. The implications of the results for the design of decision support systems were highlighted. © 1990 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.