A Knowledge Integration Approach for Organizational Decision Support

Decision Support Through Knowledge Integration

This study proposes a decision support loop through knowledge integration across multiple knowledge sources, as illustrated in Figure 1. Based on an identified managerial problem, individual knowledge is gathered and then integrated into organizational knowledge, which captures and defines the problem. This constitutes the problem formulation phase. Managerial problems commonly entail two stages in their resolution: problem formulation and problem solving (Smith, 1989). To provide a linkage between knowledge integration and decision support, the organizational knowledge model is formulated and tested, and then decision guidelines are generated based on the knowledge model. This constitutes the problem-solving phase.

Figure 1.

Decision support loop