Data science: supporting decision-making

Data science is a new academic trans-discipline that builds on 60 years of research about supporting decision-making in organisations. It is an important and potentially significant concept and practice. Contemplating the need for data scientists encourages academics and managers to examine issues of decision-maker rationality, data and data analysis needs, analytical tools, job skills and academic preparation. This article explores data science and the data professionals who will use new data streams and analytics to support decision-making. It also examines the dimensions that are changing in the data stream and the skills needed by data scientists to analyse the new data streams. Organisations need data scientists, but academics need to understand the new data science jobs to prepare more people to support decision-making.