A Conceptual Model for Group Support Systems in Local Councils

This paper proposes a conceptual model of a context-aware group support system (GSS) to assist local council employees to perform collaborative tasks in conjunction with inter- and intra-organisational stakeholders. Most discussions about e-government focus on the use of ICT to improve the relationship between government and citizen, not on the relationship between government and employees. This paper seeks to expose the unique culture of UK local councils and to show how a GSS could support local government employer and employee needs

Group Support Systems (GSS)

Groupware is a term describing an emerging computer software technology enhancing the ability of people to work together as a group, (a software driven 'group support system'). This project originated at the beginning of 1992 and reports were issued describing the activity through May 1995. These reports stressed the need for process as well as technology. That is, while the technology represented a computer assisted method for groups to work together, the Group Support System (GSS) technology als required an understanding of the facilitation process electronic meetings demand. Even people trained in traditional facilitation techniques did not necessarily aimlessly adopt groupware techniques. The latest phase of this activity attempted to (1) improve the facilitation process by developing training support for a portable groupware computer system, and (2) to explore settings and uses for the portable groupware system using different software, such as Lotus Notes

Group decision support systems

Computers are used to support collaboration among members of a business team. The specific application is the augmentation of meetings. The motivation, approach, and empirical results are presented

Frameworks for Group Support Systems

Deciding on which frameworks to use and designing those frameworks are complicated tasks. In this paper we propose using the Task and Technology Interaction (TTI) model as a frame of reference for tackling these problems in the domain of Group Support Systems (GSSs). The TTI provides a set of three high level abstractions for determining fundamental invariants of the nature of technological support embedded in GSSs and an array of distinctions within each of the three abstractions that can be used for designing frameworks for GSS

Requirements of knowledge sharing for group decision support system

Group decision support systems (GDSS) have evolved from applications designed primarily to support decision making for groups. Indeed, it is generally accepted that improvements of group support systems is a longstanding interest to organizational researchers, containing solid practical as well as scientific significance. Within this practice, there is increasing challenge to improve the exchange of knowledge among group members in order to enhance GDSS capability of knowledge sharing. Therefore, the paper investigates the current GDSS situation and analyzing the requirements of knowledge sharing (KS) to enhance GDSS. It is hoped that these findings will aid to provide GDSS systems with the solid capability of knowledge sharing

User Acceptance of Group Support Systems

A Group Support System (GSS) is a type of Information Systems that helps decision making in an organization in a group setting. Apart from groupware technologies such as email and conferencing systems, not many GSS applications have been widely accepted in organizations. Prior research has studied the factors such as task technology fit, use of appropriation mediators, and appropriation support, etc., that contribute to the successful use of GSS. Not much, however, has been written about the factors that may influence the users’ intentions to experiment and eventually accept a GSS. This study utilizes the literature on technology acceptance, adaptive structuration theory, and task technology fit to prepare a framework to investigate the factors that influence the user acceptance of GSSs in organizations

Knowledge Acquisition Using Group Support Systems

This paper reports on a project in which a group support system (GSS) equipped with a causal mapping facility was used to acquire knowledge from experts in seven European cities in order to understand the systemicity of risks which cities may face. The practical constraints demanded that participants’ experience and wisdom about the city risk environment was collected in a short period of time: three 1-day workshops. The acquisition of knowledge posed a number of important epistemological challenges which are explored in our discussion. The GSS was faced with the need to (1) facilitate sharing of knowledge with others, (2) manage the complexity of expert knowledge, (3) acknowledge the time demands on experts, (4) manage and merge multiple perspectives, and (5) acknowledge the subjectivity of knowledge in this domain. By discussing how the GSS process attended directly to these epistemological issues and to methodological considerations that linked to these issues, the paper contributes to a better understanding of the application of GSS for knowledge acquisition, particularly in comparison with other possible methods

Intelligent reports for group decision support systems

The topic of Group Decision Support Systems (GDSS) is a not a recent one. In fact, it has been studied for the last three decades. In this work, we deal with the topic of Intelligent Reports in GDSS’ context. A defective interaction between the system and the decision-maker may lead to the complete failure of the GDSS. However, the study on how and which kind of information should be exposed to decision-makers is almost non-existent. Therefore, it is important to create reports adapted to the specific necessities of each decision-maker so that each one can acknowledge the advantage to use the system and feel motivated to do so. We believe that in this work, we approach important points that require special attention when developing Intelligent Reports. We navigate through all the important factors that affect decision-makers while making a decision. We detail each point and link them to all related questions and to which kind of structure an Intelligent Report should have in order to not compromise the success of the GDSS.This work has been supported by COMPETE Programme (operational programme for competitiveness) within project POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007043, by National Funds through the FCT - Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology within the Projects UID/CEC/00319/2013, UID/EEA/00760/2013, and the João Carneiro PhD grant with the reference SFRH/BD/89697/2012.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio