Are cognitive and social factors sufficient to explain the acceptance of decision aiding processes within organisations?

Cook, R. C. (2001). Are cognitive and social factors sufficient to explain the acceptance of decision aiding processes within organisations? PhD thesis The Open University.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.21954/ou.ro.0000d551

Abstract

This research extends the limited existing research into the acceptance of decision aids by considering this in an organisational, rather than personal, context. This led to the thesis having a theory-building bias as it was not clear at the outset what a decision aid in an organisation consists of, what the main influences on acceptance would be, nor how to conduct such an enquiry. The potential influences were identified as the extent of agreement within the organisation with the way in which the decision aid represented the basic problem, and this was argued to form the cognitive and social/actors. The expectation was to find an association between the level of intra-organisational agreement and either acceptance or rejection of the decision aid if they are the sole cause. Other potential influences include the type of problem (especially whether maintenance of the status-quo is an option), the approach to decision aiding in use, and other external factors. Decision aiding in organisations was linked with approaches to organisational planning, whether or not this included significant use of IT. Such approaches involve constructing a problem representation and testing the implications of potential solutions. From this perspective, it was possible to see some of the influences on the acceptance of a decision aid as those which will affect any decision whether aided or not. The empirical work was designed to disentangle these effects by concentrating on the degree of intra-organisational agreement and using case-studies to capture any other factors which applied. The findings were that intra-organisational agreement, continuation of the status-quo and external constraints all influenced acceptance. However, there was no simple relationship between the cognitive and social factors and acceptance.

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