Note—Participative Design of Strategic Decision Support Systems: An Empirical Assessment

The concept of “participative systems design” should be as applicable to strategic management decision support systems as it is generally believed to be to lower-level systems. This study tests hypotheses concerning participative design using data describing the participation and performance of managers prior to during, and after implementation of a participatively designed system. The study concludes that there is some effect of participation on the attitudes of participants, but no measurable effect on the amount of system usage. The nature of system use was found to be related to inputs provided in the design process by participants. No advantage was found for participants in terms of the “quality” of decision making.