A FRAMEWORK FOR THE CLASSIFICATION OF DSS USAGE ACROSS ORGANIZATIONS

The research project reported in this paper constitutes an attempt to build upon existing research in the DSS area, namely the well-known fr amework for DSS developed by Gorry and Scott Morton. The authors put f orward a revised framework which researchers in the field can use to c lassify DSS applications meaningfully and make comparisons across larg e samples of systems and organizations. The findings of a three year a ction research study were used to develop a framework for the classifi cation of DSS usage which was then tested empirically. The organizatio ns studied were classified based on the extent to which they used DSS for different decision situations using two specific measurements: DSS spread and DSS complexity. The results obtained suggest that the fram ework which was developed in this research is a useful vehicle for cat egorizing the degree of maturity of organizations regarding their usag e and development of actual DSS applications. (C) 1998 Elsevier Scienc e B.V.