Non-networked group decision support system: effects of devil´s advocacy and dialectical inquiry

The research presents an experimental study on the comparisons of two different structured conflict generation approaches, devil´s advocacy (DA) and dialectical inquiry (DI), in a decision conferencing environment (a kind of non-networked GDSS). The study uses consensus (C) as the control. The main objectives were to investigate the development, management and productivity of conflicts. It thus extends the earlier studies on DA and DI from the manual group work to the computer aided group work. 20 groups, involving 116 students, participated in this study. A factorial design was used where each group achieved consensus decisions on two separate tasks. The process of decision conferencing was used to help the groups in arriving at the decision. The results are mixed. It was found that, in terms of generating conflicts there were no differences among DI, DA and C groups. For the conflict management strategies, however, DI and DA groups used fewer avoidance strategies than the C groups. The study also did not find any differences among DI, DA and C in terms of the productivity of conflict. It was, however, observed that task type plays an important role and future studies on GDSS should, therefore, be aimed at dealing with multiple tasks