decision support system
...essing these more complex, "wicked" [36] situations. To date, DSS’s have tended to support the Leibnizian (analytical-deductive) and Lockean (inductive-consensual) styles, what Mitroff and Linstone refer to as the technical perspective. They argue that UST requires consideration not only of the technical perspective, but also broad organizational and personal perspectives, and ethical and aesthetic issues, as well. This paper argues that future DSS’s should go well beyond support for Leibnizian and Lockean organizations, and provide support for decision-making in Kantian, Hegelian and especially Singerian organizational models. A new decision-making paradigm for DSS is proposed, based on the Singerian model, and Mitroff and Linstone’s UST concepts. The paper begins with a brief review of the original DSS concept, and its emphasis on attacking semi-structured management problems. Next the evolution of DSS thinking is reviewed, up to its present concern with knowledge management. Various perspectives on knowledge and knowledge management are discussed. Then Leibnizian, Lockean, Kantian, Hegelian and Singerian organizations are described, along with a discussion of decision making and knowledge management in each. The Singerian organization, which employs unbounded systems thinking to sweep in the other four models and additional considerations, is emphasized. Finally, a new decision-making paradigm which encompasses unbounded systems thinking is proposed, and its implications for DSS are considered. Development of the DSS Concept This section will briefly describe the original DSS concept and its evolution to today's concern with managing knowledge required for effective organizational decisions. It will then be argued that, while organizational decision environments have always been complex and ill structured, the environments of the near future will be even more so. This will set the stage for a discussion of a new DSS paradigm later in the paper. The Evolution of the DSS Concept ...