Business Intelligence (BI) systems are information systems that combine operational data, models, analytical tools and user interfaces to generate information to support business decision-making. BI is an important part of IT practice and is currently the highest technical priority for chief information officers. As there is to date no published academic research on the nature of BI practice we commenced an exploratory study of the area. A survey of business and IT professionals was used to test fourteen propositions about the nature of BI system adoption, development, use, and governance in Australia. This paper reports on the slice of results related to BI system use, including findings related to six propositions about the nature of BI system use. The survey highlights the critical role of BI in organizations, which justifies research effort into the area, as well as organizational spending on BI implementations.

The development of any decision support system (DSS) is a risky affair. The volatile task environment and dynamic nature of managerial work means that DSS projects are prone to failure. This chapter explores a number of aspects of DSS failure, first by considering the definition of success and failure and then by developing a set of critical success factors (CSFs) for DSS. This CSF set is used to understand two DSS project failures: one a small scale personal DSS, and the other a large enterprise-scale data warehouse with business intelligence applications. In addition to understanding DSS failure ex post, the CSF set could be used during a project to provide early warning of potentially fatal problems.

IS academics are under increasing pressure to apply for national competitive grants, internal university grants, and industry funding to support their research programs. This paper presents an investigation of the nature of DSS research funding through the analysis of 1,020 papers published in 14 high quality journals from 1990 to 2003. In the sample, 23.6% of DSS papers acknowledged grant support, 14.7% were supported by major competitive grants, and only 5.1% received industry grant support. This level of grant funding may be a major problem for the DSS field. Even more worrying is the finding that overall grant support is falling over time. The detailed analysis of DSS research funding shows what types of DSS are grant-funded, where the grant-funded papers are published, what paradigms and methods are grant-funded in DSS research, the relationship between research quality and funding type, and the relationship between grant funding and research relevance. The findings and conclusions relate to DSS research, but because of the proportion of IS research that concerns DSS, they are also important for IS research in general.

This paper is the first major report of a project that is investigating the theoretic foundations of decision support systems (DSS).The project was principally motivated by a concern for the direction and relevance of DSS research.The main areas of research focus are the decision and judgement theoretic base of the discipline, the research strategies used in published articles, and the professional relevance of DSS research.The project has analysed 926 DSS articles published in 14 major journals from 1990 to 2003.The findings indicate that DSS research is more dominated by positivist research than general information systems (in particular experiments, surveys, and descriptions of specific applications and systems), is heavily influenced by the work of Herbert Simon, is poorly grounded in contemporary judgement and decision-making research, and falls down in the identification of the nature of clients and users.Of great concern is the finding that DSS research has relatively low professional relevance.An overview of the direction of further analysis is presented.

This research project was principally motivated by a concern for the direction and relevance of DSS and GSS research. The main areas of research focus are the decision and judgement theoretic base of the discipline, the research strategies used in published articles, and the professional relevance of the research. The project has analysed 298 GSS articles published in 14 major journals from 1990 to 2003. The findings indicate that GSS research is more dominated by positivist research than general information systems; is most often published in the Journal of Group Decision and Negotiation; is poorly grounded in contemporary judgement and decision-making research; and falls down in the identification of the nature of clients and users. Of great concern is the finding that GSS research has relatively low professional relevance. An overview of the direction of further analysis is presented.

Abstract This paper is the first major report of a project that is investigating the theoretic foundations of decision support systems (DSS). The project was principally motivated by a concern for the direction and relevance of DSS research. The main areas of research focus are the decision and judgement theoretic base of the discipline, the research strategies used in published articles, and the professional relevance of DSS research. The project has analysed 926 DSS articles published in 14 major journals from 1990 to 2003. The findings indicate that DSS research is more dominated by positivist research than general information systems (in particular experiments, surveys, and descriptions of specific applications and systems), is heavily influenced by the work of Herbert Simon, is poorly grounded in contemporary judgement and decision-making research, and falls down in the identification of the nature of clients and users. Of great concern is the finding that DSS research has relatively low professional relevance. An overview of the direction of further analysis is presented.