INDUCED SYSTEM RESTRICTIVENESS - AN EXPERIMENTAL DEMONSTRATION

Decision support systems (DSS's) are built to expand human decision capabilities. DSS's, however, can simultaneously restrain decisionmaking. This characteristic is referred to as “system restrictiveness.” The paper reviews the existing conceptualization of system restrictiveness and introduces the concept of “induced restrictiveness” as a subtle force that restricts decisionmaking by inducing decisionmakers to take a particular decision process. The validity of this concept was demonstrated by a controlled laboratory experiment that employed a protocol analysis technique. The experiment evaluated the decision process induced by Lotus 1-2-3 for a particular type of task. The results indicated that Lotus tended to induce the incremental decision process as opposed to the synoptic decision process favored by the control group. The incremental decision process generates alternatives by making marginal changes to a previous solution whereas the synoptic decision process is characterized by unbiased search for solutions. These results are discussed in the context of induced restrictiveness. © 1990 IEEE