Enhancing GDSS effectiveness: automated versus human facilitation

Many group decision support systems (GDSS) are now being used with the help of a human facilitator who guides the group members through their use of the decision models. Another way to guide the use of these systems is to embed some facilitation into the GDSS itself. The tradeoffs associated with human facilitation and automated facilitation have been investigated. Groups using a multicriteria decision model in the context of a resource allocation task were exposed to one of three experimental conditions: (1) no facilitation, (2) automated facilitation, or (3) human facilitation. Results indicated that facilitated groups (human and system-based) outperformed nonfacilitated groups. Automated facilitation, embedded in the GDSS, was as effective as human facilitation in enabling groups to reach a consensus on their allocation decisions