Eptistomological Aspects of Knowledge-Based Decision Support Systems

Knowledge-based decision support applications differ from those typical of artificial intelligence expert systems in their open-ended, evolutionary character and need to coordinate with other systems resources, such as organizational databases and quantitative analysis routines. While knowledge representation machinery is becoming available, the corresponding formalization of managerial/administrative knowledge needed for DSS application is still lacking. This entails problems of an epistomological nature, identifying the foundational concepts of business. An abstract framework based on formal languages and denotational semantics is proposed, and ontological issues are identified

Database Interferencing for Decision Support

The use of databases for management decision support requires flexible inferencing mechanisms. The use of logic programming for these purposes is explored. To be flexible, however, this requires the logical decomposition of the database into elementary predicates

Logical Interpretation of Relational Databases

The reformulation of data management type databases in a formal, logical calculus is described. Advantages of this logical form are to provide a framework for automatic inferencing on the database as well as a formal clarification of the databases semantics. Principle applications are to artificially intelligent managerial decision support systems

Relational Databases,Logical Databases and the Entity-Relationships Approach

A comparison of relational databases, as known in Data Management, and logical databases, as used in Artificial Intelligence is made. This comparison is then used to examine certain semantic issues raised by the Entity-Relationship Model

Applications Software and Organizational Change: Issues in the Representation of Knowledge

It is a commonplace observation that organizations, to survive, must adapt to changes in their environment. Those that do not are forced out of business, if they are companies in a competitive market; have their budgets canceled, in the case of government bureaucracies; or are overthrown, in the case of governments themselves. Just how an organization should be designed to accommodate change is, of course, a much more difficult matter, and has been the subject of many volumes of organizational theory. What I want to examine here is one aspect of this general problem that seems to have been neglected, namely the effect of information technology on the organization's ability to adapt and change

Bureaucracies, Bureaucrats and Technology

The term bureaucracy is laden with negative connotations. One thinks of large, rigidified organizations with baroque, ritualized procedures incapable of adapting to changing needs and conditions in the environment. In mentioning the term bureaucracy one usually also speaks of its means of perpetuation: the professional bureaucrat. These are usually cast as unimaginative, plodding individuals socialized into the rule system of the bureaucracy to the point where the rules themselves, and not the purposes behind the rules, become the reason and guides of their employ. In recent years, another force has appeared which threatens to spread, the phenomenon of bureaucracy even further; namely the implementation of these bureaucratic rules and procedures in the form of computer-based administrative systems. The purpose of this paper is to review in somewhat more depth the nature and interaction of these three forces: the bureaucratic organization itself; the bureaucrats that populate such organizations; and the special impact of information technology on their operation

The Technological Obsolescence of Mediocrity

Will artificially intelligent expert systems necessarily serve to amplify human intelligence? Or will they simply create another wave of technological displacement? What types of occupations will be affected? What effects will these technologies have on developing human expertise

Analyzing Red Tape: The Performative vs Informative Roles of Bureaucratic Documents

The preparation and transfer of documents bureaucratic procedures are generally viewed solely as a means of transferring information within the organization. When taken as the basis for analyzing and improving bureaucratic systems, this view is too narrow. Another, performative aspect of these documents also needs to be considered in the analysis. This paper elaborates on this additional function of organizational documents and points out the need for a broader framework for analyzing bureaucratic systems