Using group decision support systems to facilitate organizational change

Using Group Decision Support Systems to Facilitate Organizational Change Jeroen Monteban University of Twente P.O. Box 217, 7500AE Enschede The Netherlands

j.monteban@student.utwente.nl

and decision technologies to support problem formulation and solution in group meetings’ [7].

ABSTRACT Organizational change is an important topic in a world of ever changing customer needs and globalization. Group Decision Support Systems (GDSSs) seem to present themselves as an excellent tool to facilitate this change, but are little used. This paper investigates both organizational change and Group Decision Support Systems and suggests how the latter can facilitate the first. To do so, a literature review is conducted and an experiment is performed to test whether the use of a GDSS increases the quality of a brainstorm session. We conclude in the literature review that the use of GDSSs in organizational change seems promising and has the potential to increase its quality and its support within the organization.

However, the experiment found no support that the use of a GDSS increased the quality of brainstorm results.

The use of GDSSs seems perfect for the facilitation of organizational change, as many decisions have to be made in the process. All identifying, examining and implementing of new ideas requires problem formulation and solution in group meetings. The question that rises is why there is so little information to be found about the application of GDSS in the process of organizational change.

1.1 Problem statement

Keywords

Group Decision Support Systems have been a field of research and development for the past two decades and are regularly used in certain aspects of modern business.

However, in the often difficult process of organizational change, GDSSs are scarcely used, which is proven by the lack of information to be found on the use of it.

Organizational change, Group Decision Support System, GDSS, OCAI, Spilter

1.2 Research questions

1. INTRODUCTION

The problem statement above leads to the following main research question:

Many organizations are faced with the challenge of adapting to the ever changing needs of our globalized economy. Not only are they subject to intensified competition due to increasing globalization over the last decades [40] and ever changing customer demands, all other stakeholder such as employees and shareholder also have certain demands and requirements, as do governments. In order to satisfy all involved parties an organization finds itself in constant need of change and adaption [35].

How can Group Decision Support Systems be used to effectively facilitate organizational change?

This main research question can be divided in the following research questions: 1) 2) 3)

Lines et al. define organizational change as ‘a change in organizational structures, systems, routines, technology or product market domain that was intended to further the achievement of important organizational objectives’ [25].

Many theories yet exist describing organizational change and providing guidelines for successful change.

4)

Which stakeholders are involved in the process of organizational change?

Which actions are required in the process of organizational change?

What are the key strengths and advantages of available Group Decision Support Systems?

How can a Group Decision Support System effectively facilitate the required steps for organizational change?

2. RESEARCH METHODS The research performed in this paper is twofold. First, a literature review will be conducted on both organizational change and GDSSs. With this review, we will create an overview of the research that is already performed on these subjects. Also, we will draft a view on the use of GDSS in organizational change. Secondly, an experiment will be performed, which will either confirm or refute the formulated view.

Group Decision Support System (GDSS) is a term used to describe systems which ‘combine communication, computer, Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee.

21st Twente Student Conference on IT, June 23, 2014, Enschede, The Netherlands.

Copyright 2014, University of Twente, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science.

2.1 Literature Conducting a literature review should be a structured process resulting in an overview of the available literature on the 1

topic. This paper will do a literature review based on the fivestage grounded-theory method for reviewing literature by Wolfswinkel et al. [38], which can be summarized by Table 1.

Table 1 Five-stage grounded-theory method for reviewing literature Number 1. DEFINE 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 2. SEARCH 2.1 3. SELECT 3.1 4. ANALYZE 4.1 4.2 4.3 5. PRESENT 5.1 5.2

Task Define the criteria for inclusion/exclusion Identify the fields of research Determine the appropriate sources Decide on the specific search terms Search Refine the sample Open coding Axial coding Selective coding Represent and structure the content Structure the article

Figure 1 Kitchenham’s six phases of empirical research

2.2 Experiment

change: Which stakeholder are involved in the process of organizational change? and Which actions are required in the process of organizational change?

To support the results found in the literature review, an experiment will be conducted. This experiment aims to test whether the use of a GDSS improves the results of a stage of organizational change: brainstorming. With the data gathered during the experiment we hope to confirm the results found in the literature review.

3.1.1 Involved stakeholders Firstly, we will examine the stakeholders involved in the process of organizational change. Weiss defined stakeholders as individuals, groups or organizations which can influence the stages of development of a company [2]. Freeman elaborated this view by considering stakeholders to be any group or individuals who can affect or be affected by an organization [11]. Stakeholders encompassed by this definition can be found within the organization, such as employees, managers and departments, but also outside the organization, such as shareholders, suppliers and customers, but also governments and competitors.

The experiment will be designed using ‘Preliminary Guidelines for Empirical Research in Software Engineering’

by Kitchenham et al. [21]. Here, Kitchenham et al. provide guidelines for empirical research, such as we wish to conduct, and pinpoint a number of common mistakes and pitfalls.

Although their guide is specifically focused on Software Engineering and our experiment does not concern this, their guidelines are still very useable with minor adjustments.

According to Kitchenham et al, six phases can be distinguished in empirical research. Figure 1 shows these six phases and provides a short description of the suggestions made by Kitchenham et al. on the phases. The experiment presented later in this paper is designed, executed and described following this structure.

Of course, every organization has different stakeholders.

These different types of stakeholders are dependent on the industrial context of an organization. Clearly, a University will have different stakeholders than an oil company.

However, some stakeholders overlap, such as employees. The art of analyzing stakeholders, conveniently called stakeholder analysis, has gained an increased interest of management and development [3]. The goal of this analysis is to gain insight in the involved stakeholders and their relevance to the project.

This is done by reviewing their position, interest, influence, interrelations, etc., while looking at the past, present as well as the future.

3. LITERATURE REVIEW This literature review will look into both research done on organizational change and on Group Decision Support Systems on the basis of the introduced research questions and review method.

Oliveira and Perondi propose a stakeholder analysis compromising 6 steps. First, stakeholders need to be identified. This step is an important part of the analysis since in order to successfully implement organizational change, all stakeholders should be taken into account [24]. This step is executed by carefully analyzing all groups or individuals in contact with the organization [33] [27] [29]. Reyes-Alcázar et al. did this by designing an ad-hoc questionnaire, Oliveira and Perondi did this by careful reading and studying the context of the organization.

3.1 Organizational change As introduced, organizational change can be defined as a change in an organization’s structure, system, routine, technology or product market that is intended to accomplish important organizational objectives [25]. As is clear, the extent of the term organizational change is rather large and involves most changes in organizations. In order to determine in which way organizational change can be facilitated by GDSSs, we will first dive deeper into the concepts of organizational change. We will do this on the basis of the two introduced research questions themed around organizational 2

When all stakeholders are identified, they need to be classified into more general categories. Wood [39] distinguishes two categories of stakeholders, primary and secondary. Primary stakeholders include those who are (partially) dependent on the organization, or vice versa. Secondary stakeholders are, for example, governments, media and all kinds of institutions.

Freeman et al. [12] identified a basic list of five stakeholders for both of these categories. They consider employees, suppliers, funders, communities and customers to be the basic primary stakeholders and competitors, consumer advocate groups, special-interest groups, the media and the government to be the basic secondary stakeholders. However, these are guidelines and different categories can be used.

An early and widely known idea about change was created by Kurt Lewin, who proposed three stages of change: unfreeze, change and (re)freeze [23]. Lewin argued that in order to accomplish change, an organization first has to ‘unfreeze’ from its old habits and mind set. Then, change is implemented. After the change has been completed, the organization once again freezes in the new situation. It is argued that Lewin’s idea of change is still the basis of many theories of organizational change [19]. This theory does however not fully comply with the idea of continuous change, which presumes organizational change to be ‘ongoing, evolving and cumulative’ [37], an idea that is also broadly supported nowadays.

After categorizing stakeholders, they should be ranked and classified according to their interests, influence and importance. Finally, the analysis should describe the actions or functions to be performed by the organization in order to fulfill the expectations of all stakeholders and manage them [27].

In 1995, Van de Ven and Poole provided four types of process theories on the change and development of organizations. All of these theories have a different view on and approach to organizational development and change.

Figure 2 shows these four types of theories and the steps they undertake to accomplish change [34]. Depending on the mode of change and unit of change, this overview can provide a very global idea of the approach to organizational change.

Varvasovsky and Brugha provide an insight in the desired handling of stakeholders depending on their position towards the project, as showed in table 2 [33]. This makes clear that no general approach should be used in the management of stakeholders, but that they should be managed based in the information gained during the stakeholder analysis.

Table 2 Desired handling of stakeholders Strategies Involve

Collaborate

Defend

Monitor

Supportive

Optimal fit

Missed opportunities

Missed opportunities

Missed opportunities

Mixed

Risk

Optimal fit

Missed opportunities

Positions

Missed opportunities and Risk

Nonsupportive

Risk

Risk

Optimal fit

Risk

Marginal

Resource waste

Resource waste

Resource waste

Optimal fit

Figure 2 Four types of process theories on the change and development of organizations Fernandez and Rainey provide a more detailed approach to organizational change, containing eight factors that are important in the process of organizational change, which is supported by a large body of research [9]. These eight factors each describe aspects that are of vital importance in order to successfully implement change. From these factors, a few steps can be derived which have to be performed to accomplish organizational change, which are shown in Figure 3.

As is clear, the process of stakeholders analysis and stakeholder management has been studied intensively the past decades, which provides us with a lot of guidance in the identification, classification and managing of stakeholders. In this research, however, we focus on organizational change without specifying the type of industrial context of the organization. Therefore, we will not go into deeper in the specifics of stakeholder analysis.

We asked ourselves which stakeholders are involved in the process of organizational change. This research question cannot be answered in general, but should be looked at for each individual organization by performing a stakeholder analysis. However, general groups of stakeholders can be identified, of which employees, suppliers, funders, communities and customers seem to be the most important and to be involved in most organizations.

Figure 3 Steps in the process of organizational change The first step to be taken is to ensure the need of the change.

Organizational change requires members of (a part of) an organization to be convinced the change is necessary of useful in order for the change to be successful [22]. This resembles to Lewin’s phase of unfreezing, as mentioned earlier.

Secondly, a course of action has to be determined. Naturally, such a course will be different for all organizations and for all changes, and has to be based on the organization’s current situation [1].

3.1.2 Required actions Now that we have a view on the stakeholders involved in the process of organizational change, we can take a look at the steps required to successfully perform or implement this change.

Then, support has to be built within and outside of the organization. Earlier, we discussed the identification of stakeholders within an organization. As Fernandez and 3

Rainey point out, it is important to gain support in all vital stakeholder groups. First and foremost, internal support must be established. Often, internal resistance to change is the first sign that an intended change will be dysfunctional [28].

Internal support also includes the support and commitment of high management positions, which is often crucial in the change process [5]. Support from identified external stakeholders is also part of this step.

GDSS supports a more ‘democratic’ participation in face-toface sessions [15].

As indicated by studies, we expect the use of a GDSS to be in the increased decision quality and lower decision time. Of course, decision quality is factor which is very hard to determine. Other studies have tried this by comparing the decision to a correct answer, if the decision has a definite, correct answer, by comparing the results by the decision made by a panel of experts or by assigning a value score to the decision [4] [16]. Several studies show different results on the advantages of the use of a GDSS. Increase in decision quality was found, however only for high complexity decisions, whereas no significant difference could be found on low complexity decisions [13] [4] [14]. Regarding decision time, the same studies found that high complexity decision had no significant difference between GDSS and non-GDSS groups.

However, low complexity decisions took more time with GDSS than without one. This combination leads to the suggestion that a GDSS is more useful in the decision-making process of a problem with high complexity.

Of course, sufficient resources to support the intended change have to be provided during the entire process. And finally, it is important to institutionalize the change in order to ensure the continuation of the initiated change.

The steps described are of course not the only possible approach to organizational change and might differ in different change project, however they do provide a general course of action applicable to many situations.

3.2 Group Decision Support Systems Now that we have more detailed information on organizational change, we will go into more detail on Group Decision Support Systems. As introduced, a Group Decision Support System is a system which can ‘combine communication, computer, and decision technologies to support problem formulation and solution in group meetings’ [7]. To discover the use of these systems in the process of organizational change, we first have to gain more information about them. Therefore, we will first try to answer the research questions introduced earlier: What are the key strengths and advantages of available Group Decision Support Systems? and How can a Group Decision Support System effectively facilitate the required steps for organizational change?

However, as is often the case, not all researchers agree.

George et al. performed similar experiments, but found no significant evidence that the use of a GDSS increased decision quality, though they suggest that their problem might not have been of a high enough complexity for the GDSS to make a difference [16]. This same study did however show a significant increase of user participation when a GDSS is used. Referring back to Eden, who argues political feasibility is an important and required quality of a decision, high user participation can be an important advantage. Regarding user satisfaction, George et al. found no significant difference between GDSS and non-GDSS groups, whereas Gallupe and DeSanctis found that using GDSS for face-to-face meetings resulted in a lower satisfaction when using a GDSS [14].

3.2.1 Key strengths and advantages DeSanctis and Gallupe define a decision-making group as ‘two or more people who are jointly responsible for detecting a problem, elaborating on the nature of the problem, generating possible solutions, evaluating potential solutions, or formulating strategies for implementing solutions’. The goal of a GDSS is to support these two or more people in fulfilling their responsibility of detecting and elaborating problems, generating and evaluating solutions and formulating strategies for implementation [7]. They suggest three approaches to support this goal, resulting in three different types of GDSSs, varying by their level of sophistication. Level 1 GDSSs support decision-making by removing common communication barriers by i.e. displaying suggested ideas or providing anonymity. Level 2 GDSSs combine these features with detailed tools for analyses, such as a risk analysis. Finally, a Level 3 GDSS includes elaborate rule-making processes, allowing the system to ‘think’ with the group. By composing rules for patterns, timing or content the system can provide more sophisticated support [7].

An interesting new development in the area is the shift from owned hardware to the use of Software as a Service (SaaS) in the Cloud. Cloud computing is defined by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) as ‘a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computer resources (e.g. networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction’ [26]. Though this trend is from the last years and is still in its early stages, it shows promise to become very important and useful in the future [20] and has a great potential for enabling GDSS on a large scale.

As is clear, not all empirical research available on the subjects agrees on the effects of the use of a GDSS. However, most studies do agree on its use resulting in increased decisionquality and user participation, especially for high-complexity decisions.

Several studies in the past years indicated that the use of a GDSS has positive effects on group decision-making. Eden argues that the use of GDSSs is in its ability to encourage ‘creativity, developing emotional commitment, and attending to political feasibility’ [8]. He argues that political feasibility is an important and required quality of a decision, if the organizational change intended by the decision is to follow.

After all, if a decision does not accomplish the intended goal it is not an effective decision, no matter how rational the decision was. By involving stakeholders in the decisionmaking process using a GDSS, the political feasibility of a decision is increased. As found by Gallupe and McKeen, a

3.2.2 Facilitating organizational change using a GDSS Our fourth research question is closely relating to the main research question: How can a Group Decision Support System effectively facilitate the required steps for organizational change?

The literature from our previous section suggests that GDSSs increase decision quality for high-complexity problems. Of course, the complexity of a problem leading to the need of organizational change can be of different complexities.

However, considering the amount of stakeholders involved in 4

the change of an organization and the fact that these decisions often have a great impact on the organization, most of these problems can be considered to be high-complexity problems [36]. This means that a GDSS can have a positive influence on the decision quality of the decisions to be made during organizational change.

should be pursued [6]. It does so by assessing six key dimensions of an organizational culture:  Dominant Characteristics  Organizational Leadership  Management of Employees  Organization Glue  Strategic Emphases  Criteria of Success Participants are asked to assess all these dimension on four types of cultures: Clan, Adhocracy, Market and Hierarchy.

OCAI asks them to divide 100 points among these four cultures, based on the organization’s similarities to this culture. Figure 4 shows an overview of these cultures and their focus, which Cameron and Quinn call the ‘competing values framework’.

As GDSSs can also increase user participation during the decision-making process, decisions involving different stakeholders can get broader support by these stakeholders.

As was stated, internal resistance to change is often a first sign the change will be dysfunctional. By creating a broader support for decisions, this resistance to change can be reduced, therefore increasing the change of a successful implementation of the intended change.

To conclude the literature review, we can endorse our earlier statement: a lot of literature is available on both organizational change and Group Decision Support Systems, however little is to be found on the combination of the two.

The previous sections on both subjects confirm that there are certain steps in the process of organizational change that can be facilitated and/or improved by using a GDSS.

The Hierarchy culture is considered to be stable and is often related with bureaucracy. Rules, specialization and hierarchy are important attributes of this culture.

The Market culture is more focused on external activities than on internal affairs. Through transactions with other parties, such as suppliers or customers, it aims to establish competitiveness and productivity.

4. RESEARCH APPROACH

The Clan culture focuses on shared values and goals and cohesion. By establishing the organization as an ‘extended family’ employees are encouraged to improve their own work and are often more motivated.

This experiment in this research is designed and executed according to the guidelines by Kitchenham et al. in their ‘Preliminary Guidelines for Empirical Reseach in Software Engineering’ [21]. This guide specifies a few different steps in experiments: experimental context, experimental design, conducting and data collection, analysis, presentation and interpretation of results. In the description of this experiment, we will describe the relevant information for the first of these steps.

The Adhocracy culture aims to respond to the fast-changing markets by encouraging entrepreneurship and creativity. They create their economic value by innovation and development.

4.1 Experimental context This experiment will be a small-scale test of the use of a GDSS in (a part of) the process of organizational change.

Despite the limited availability of resources we attempt to gain an insight of the use of GDSS ‘Spilter’ in a brainstorming session at the University of Twente. The tool itself will be explained later in this paper. The experiment will be performed within the University of Twente and will therefore be set in an academic environment. With a staff of about 3.300 academics and other employees and 9.000 students the University profiles itself as ‘the entrepreneurial university’ [32]. The experiment will be performed with different employees from the University, involving both academic and supporting staff.

Figure 4 The competing values framework OCAI-analyses have been performed at Universities in earlier studies. Both studies showed the same results: participants preferred less Hierarchy and Market culture, more Clan culture and no change in the Adhocracy culture [30][10]. An example of the result of an OCAI-analysis is shown in figure 5 [30].

During this experiment we will try to answer the following question: Does the use of GDSS Spilter increase the quality of brainstorm results on organizational change? We will discuss organizational change in the University based on the results of the Online Culture Assessment Instrument (OCAI), which measures the organizational culture of an organization.

4.1.1 Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument The Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument (OCAI) is a research method designed to examine organizational culture in all types of organizations. Organizational culture is, according to OCAI-designers Cameron and Quinn, an essential part in the potential success of an organization and improves their performance and long-term effectiveness [6].

OCAI both identifies the current organizational culture of organizations and measure the culture that employees think

Figure 5 Example of an OCAI-analysis 5

because this provides more precision when fewer subjects are used [17].

4.1.2 Spilter The GDSS we will use in this experiment is called the ‘Spilter Besluitenversneller’ (Spilter Decision Accelerator, henceforth called Spilter), developed by Spilter®. Spilter is a web-based tool useable for management- or strategy-issues, team- or project-meetings, innovation or marketing.

Table 3 Crossover design

In Spilter, one can create a session which consists of four stages: assessing, categorizing, prioritizing and deciding. The facilitator can determine the structure of the meeting beforehand and insert brainstorm sessions, questions or analyses. It creates real-time output and reports, allowing for a fast overview of results.

GR1

GR2

Traditional methods

ST1

ST2

Using Spilter

ST2

ST1

As table 3 shows, both groups will discuss both statements, once using Spilter and once using traditional brainstorming methods. These methods include pen and paper and discussion. Both groups are requested to present their three best solutions to the problems formulated in ST1 and ST2 at the end of each session. This will result in six solution per statement.

Spilter was chosen as GDSS because the University of Twente already had a license for this tool.

4.2 Experimental design

After both sessions are completed, all solutions will be rated on a scale from 1 to 5. Participants are asked to rate the solutions on their impact, usefulness, whether it solves the problem and whether it is realistic. This will result in an average score for all solutions, after which we can analyze whether the solutions generated by Spilter sessions were rated higher.

Goal of this experiment is to test whether the use of Spilter increases the quality of brainstorm results on organizational change. In order to do so, we must a)

Acquire participants for this experiment

b)

Find (relevant) topics organizational change

c)

Brainstorm on organizational change both with and without help of Spilter

All results are handled anonymous. The exact procedure of the Spilter sessions can be found in Appendix A.

d)

Determine the quality of the brainstorm results

e)

Analyze whether the results using Spilter are (significantly) better

5. RESULTS

for

brainstorming

on

Below, the results of the experiment are described. Once again, this is done according to Kitchenham’s guidelines.

First, participants must be found to participate in the experiment. To find participants, email contact will be established to a few departments of the University of Twente.

The following departments will be contacted for participating: 

Industrial Engineering and Business Information Systems (IEBIS)



Business Administration



Human Resources Management

5.1 OCAI results First, the OCAI-survey was distributed among the participants through an online questionnaire. The response rate was 100%.

The results from the survey can be found in Table 4 and Figure 6. The OCAI results showed that participants preferred a strong cultural shift from Hierarchy to Clan (in accordance to previous studies at universities). Both of these cultures focus on internal maintenance and integration, however, Clan culture focuses on flexibility and discretion, whereas Hierarchy focuses on stability and control. This trend is confirmed by the fact that the OCAI results show that participants prefer a slight decrease of Market culture (controlled) and a slight increase of Adhocracy culture (flexible). Therefore, the two statements to be discussed were based on a culture shift from a controlled environment to a more flexible one. The following statements were chosen:

These departments were chosen to get a diverse group with different visions on the University. Unfortunately, due to time issues, only 8 participants were found. Though we recognize that this might give problems with the significance of our results, we still believe this can provide a useful insight in the use of Spilter.

All participants are asked to fill out the OCAI assessment.

Statements will be produced based on the results of this assessment to be the topic of discussion (i.e. ‘The University should improve employee satisfaction’ or ‘The University should be less focused on producing enough papers’).

 

During the brainstorm sessions, a crossover design will be used. First, a brief explanation and instruction will be given to the participants. During this instruction, possible biasing of the participants shall be prevented as much as possible. Then, two groups are (randomly) formed, GR1 and GR2, which both are to discuss two statements, ST1 and ST2. This leads to the design shown in table 3. A crossover design was chosen

The University should give employees more flexibility in their activities (ST1).

The University should improve employee satisfaction (ST2).

Table 4 Results from the OCAI-survey Clan Adhocracy Market Hierarchy

6

Now

30.14

23.75

18.89

27.22

Preferred

38.89

26.67

15.69

18.75

procedure). These twelve solution were then rated on a scale of 1 to 5 by all participants. This resulted in an average score for each solution, which can be found in Table 5.

5.3 Statistical analysis This experiment has one Independent Variable (type of brainstorm session), with a sample size of two. Therefore, an independent sample t-test is the most appropriate statistical analysis [31]. ANOVA was not used because this test is not optimal for a sample size of two [18].

As null hypothesis H0 we state H0: μ1 = μ2 where μ1 is the mean of the Spilter session solutions and μ2 is the mean of the traditional session solutions. Therefore, alternative hypothesis HA is HA: μ1 ≠ μ2.

Table 6 shows the Group Statistics about the two different groups. Table 7 shows the Independent Samples Test. First, we look at the Levene’s Test for Equality of Variances. With a significance of 95%, we can state that the variances are equal. Therefore, we look at the upper row, which shows a pvalue of .205. This means that with a significance of 95%, the null hypothesis is not rejected. Therefore, HA is rejected, meaning that there is no significant difference between the quality of the solution created by Spilter sessions and traditional sessions.

Figure 6 Graphical representation of the OCAI results

5.2 Brainstorm sessions Based on the statements mentioned above, brainstorm sessions were organized. The eight participants were randomly and evenly divided in two groups. The first group, Group 1, started with discussing the first statement, ST1, using Spilter. Group 2 started with discussing ST1 using traditional brainstorming methods. Both groups worked on different locations. Group 1 was accompanied in order to answer questions about the User Interface and functionality of Spilter. Group 2 was not accompanied and was not given any instruction on how to perform their session, only to present three solutions in the provided time. After fifteen minutes, both groups switched rooms. Now, group 2 discussed ST2 using Spilter and group 1 discussed ST2 with traditional brainstorming methods. Once again the Spilter-group was accompanied in order to answer questions about Spilter. This session also lasted fifteen minutes.

5.4 Discussion Though the experiment did show a slightly higher rating for solution provided with the help of Spilter, this difference is not significant and therefore we cannot conclude that Spilter increased the quality of the solutions provided to the statements. However, since the experiment was very smallscale it is hard to get significant results. The small scale restricted this experiment and therefore restricted this research. With more resources and a larger scale, more results might have been booked.

The results from the OCAI-survey were in line with earlier OCAI-studies at Universities [30][10].

After both sessions, both traditional sessions had resulted in three solutions written on paper. Both Spilter session had also resulted in three solutions (see Appendix A for the exact

The University should give employees more flexibility in their activities Solution Average score More room for research outside long-term programs 3.50 Reduce workload to make time to think on new ideas instead of having to allocate all 4.00 time to routine jobs Support entrepreneurial spirit 3.88 Usage of online teaching 3.75 Interchangeability of teaching personnel 3.88 Offer teaching to more students (bigger lectures) 2.88 3.65 The University should improve employee satisfaction Solution Average score Less organizational change (especially teaching-related) 4.25 Hire more employees to generate more time per employee 3.88 Reduce working pressure by hiring more employees 3.88 Less formalities, better administration 3.88 Career opportunities 3.75 Give (employees) the idea the workload is managed 3.75 3.90 7

St.dev.

1.12

Source Spilter

0.71

Spilter

0.78 1.20 1.17 1.17 1.11

Spilter Trad.

Trad.

Trad.

St.dev.

0.97 1.05 1.05 0.60 0.66 0.66 0.87

Source Spilter Spilter Spilter Trad.

Trad.

Trad.

Score of solution

Type of session

N

Mean

Std. Deviation

Std. Error Mean

Spilter

6

3,8983

,24236

,09894

Traditional

6

3,6483

,38175

,15585

6. CONCLUSION

insights, the experiment did not result in a significant increase of quality when a GDSS was used.

Organizational change is a process that is and always will be of interest to organizations of any kind. Being adaptable to the environment is a much discussed subject in organizations, making change of vital importance. Group Decision Support Systems support the decision-making process in groups by increasing their decision quality and increasing participation.

The use of GDSSs during organizational change appears to be an ideal combination, which is why we asked ourselves: How can Group Decision Support Systems be used to effectively facilitate organizational change?

However, only a small part in the process of organizational change, brainstorming, was used for testing during this research. Furthermore, the experiment was very small-scale due to a lack of resources, making it very hard to get significant results. Future work can therefore focus on other parts of organizational change and increase the scale of the research, allowing for more reliable results. This may include decision-making on different approaches to the change, stakeholder management or decisions on restructuring the organization.

During a literature review, we found that a wide range of stakeholders is involved in the process of organizational change and discussed a few methods to identify these stakeholders. Important stakeholders which are applicable to most organizations include employees, suppliers and customers. In order to successfully change an organization, several steps have to be executed. Though there are different theories on the process, important steps are ensuring the need of the change, providing a plan, building support, providing the resources and institutionalize the change.

Furthermore, many types of organizations exist. An University is very different from a company aiming for maximal profit, and also very different from government agency. Future work may include research on different and/or multiple organizations.

8. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost I wish to thank Jos van Hillegersberg for his guidance, ideas and support during this research. I’d also like to thank Fons Wijnhoven for his coordination on the process. Finally, I wish to thank all the participants in my experiment.

GDSSs have shown to have a positive influence on the decision quality of high-complexity problems and to increase the participation during a decision-making process. Since internal resistance to change is a danger to the success of the change process, the increased participation has a positive influence on the potential success of an organizational change. Also, high-complexity problems are often part of these changes, adding another benefit to the use of a GDSS during organizational change.

Without these people, this paper would not have been possible. Thank you.

9. REFERENCES [1] Abramson, M.A., and Lawrence, P.R. 2001. The Challenge of Transforming Organizations: Lessons Learned about Revitalizing Organizations. In Transforming Organizations, Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, MD, 2001, 4-8.

The experiment performed in this research did not prove a significant increase in idea-quality during brainstorm processes when a GDSS was used. However, this might be explained by the fact that these were not high-complexity decisions that had to be made.

[2] Branco, M.S.A., Loureiro, G., Trabasso, L.G. Stakeholder value analysis of architecture alternatives for sustainable space systems developments, Sixth International Aerospace Congress IAC'09, (Moscow, 2009), Moscow State University, 23-27.

Taking into accounts all these points, our main research question can be answered by the fact that GDSSs can definitely be used to facilitate organizational change. By increasing participation and therefore potentially decreasing internal resistance to change, and providing higher decision quality on high-complexity problems, the use of a GDSS can increase the chance of success for an organizational change and increase its quality. However, further research and experimenting is necessary to confirm this.

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7. FUTURE WORK This research focused on a literature review with a small-scale experiment. Though the literature review resulted in useful

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APPENDIX A. SPECIFICATION OF SPILTER BRAINSTORMSESSION The Spilter brainstorm session consists of three parts. First, ideas can be generated by all users. All ideas posted will be immediately visible for all users.

Secondly, users are asked whether the ideas generated in the previous section are feasible within 3 years. This is done to filter nonrealistic ideas from the session. Users can select all ideas they believe to be feasible within 3 years.

All ideas that are selected to be feasible at least once, are presented in the final list. Users are asked to rate all these potential, feasible solutions on a scale from 1 to 10. Spilter will compute the average score of each solution, from which a top 3 can be selected.

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