An organizational decision support system for effective R&D project selection
Introduction
Research and development (R&D) project selection is an organizational decision-making task commonly found in organizations like government funding agencies, universities, research institutes, and technology-intensive companies. It is a complicated and challenging task to organizations with the following reasons: (1) it is very difficult to predict the future success and impacts of the candidate projects; (2) it is a multi-stage multi-person decision making process involving a group of decision makers (e.g. external reviewers and panel experts). Thus, it can be very hard to manage the decision-making process, especially when the decision makers have heterogeneous decision-making strategies [5], [7], [22].
In the past four decades, a number of decision models and methods (e.g. Mathematical Programming and Optimization, Decision Analysis, Economic Models, and Interactive Method) have been developed to help organizations make better decisions in R&D project selection [7], [16]. However, current research findings [14], [22] indicate that many of the elaborated decision models and methods are not being used, and they have limited impacts on decision makings for real-world project selection. In order to improve the usability of decision models and methods in real application, decision support systems (DSSs) have been proposed and developed, which integrate decision models and methods with computer-based supports together [5], [10], [13], [14], [24]. Although some of the proposed DSSs are useful, they use decision models and methods for specific tasks and fail to support the whole decision-making processes at the organization level. Since the R&D project selection process typically involves multiple decision makers in different organizational units, an organizational decision support system (ODSS) is more appropriate for R&D project selection tasks.
ODSS is an integrated decision support tool with focus on the organization-wide issues rather than individual, group, or departmental issues [4], [6], [18]. It supports organizational decision activities by integrating model base with database and user interfaces over the communication networks. ODSS is different from the traditional DSS in aspects such as goal, scope, users, technology components, and implementation methodologies [11], [12].
ODSS combines computer and communication technologies to coordinate decision-making activities across functional areas and hierarchical layers [20], [28]. ODSS architectures have been proposed to support distributed decision-making tasks with access controls over the organization [8], [17], [25]. ODSSs have been applied in the telecommunication organizations [11], the military [3], the governments [23], and other organizations [2], [19], [21]; however, few research can be found in ODSS for R&D project selection. This paper attempts to present the development of an ODSS for the selection of R&D projects at the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC).
Section 2 of this paper describes the research background. Section 3 proposes an ODSS architecture for R&D project selection. Section 4 reports the application of the proposed ODSS in NSFC. A summary of the contribution and lessons learned can be found in the last section.
Section snippets
Research background
NSFC (http://www.nsfc.gov.cn) is the largest government funding agency in China with a primary aim to promote basic and applied research. Supported by the Chinese government, NSFC's annual budget has been dramatically increased from RMB 80 million in 1986 to over RMB 1,290 million in 2000. Up to 1999, it has provided funding support for more than 51,500 projects.
There are seven scientific departments, four bureaus, one general office and three associated units in NSFC. The scientific
An ODSS for R&D project selection
This section introduces an object-oriented approach to the development of ODSS and its applications in the R&D project selection.
Application of the ODSS for R&D project selection in NSFC
The proposed ODSS has been implemented and incorporated in the Internet-based Science Information System (ISIS: http://isis.nsfc.gov.cn). It is built on a three-tier client/server platform as shown in Fig. 4. Object-oriented software engineering method, i.e. the UML [1], has been used in the analysis, design, and implementation of the system. Thus the components of the ODSS and those of ISIS are compared as shown in Table 3.
ISIS is built on the proposed ODSS architecture. It provides a set of
Contribution and lessons learned
This paper presents an ODSS framework for R&D project selection. It includes a group-based modeling method for R&D project selection, and a corresponding ODSS architecture that supports and coordinates the work of decision-making groups. The proposed ODSS architecture provides support functions for decision makers at individual, group and organizational levels to achieve the organizational goal. In addition, the group management component of the ODSS architecture is presented to handle the
Acknowledgements
This research was partly supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and Hong Kong Research Grant Council Joint Funding Scheme (Project No. 9050137), the Competitive Earmarked Research Grant (CERG), Hong Kong SAR (Project No.9040709 and 9040825) and Strategic Research Grant of City University of Hong Kong (Project No. 7001017). Many thanks to the anonymous reviewers for their contributions to improve this manuscript.
Qijia Tian is currently pursuing his Ph.D. degree in the Department of Information Systems, City University of Hong Kong. His current research interests include organizational decision support systems, agent-based coordination in organizational decision-making and object-oriented model management.
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Qijia Tian is currently pursuing his Ph.D. degree in the Department of Information Systems, City University of Hong Kong. His current research interests include organizational decision support systems, agent-based coordination in organizational decision-making and object-oriented model management.
Jian Ma is an Associate Professor in the Department of Information Systems, City University of Hong Kong. He received his Doctor of Engineering degree in Computer Science from Asia Institute of Technology in 1991. He was a Lecturer in the School of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of New South Wales, Australia, before joining City University in 1993. Dr. Ma's research areas include Web-based decision support systems, and object-oriented methods for information system development. His past research has been published in IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, IEEE Transactions on Education, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, Decision Support Systems and European Journal of Operational Research.
Jiazhi Liang is currently pursuing his M.Phil. degree in the Department of Information Systems, City University of Hong Kong. His current research interests include component-based information system development and electronic document management.
Ron Chi-Wai Kwok is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Information Systems, City University of Hong Kong. He received his Ph.D. in Information Systems from City University of Hong Kong. He was an Assistant Professor at the School of Management, the State University of New York at Binghamton before joining City University in 2002. His current research interests include group support system (GSS), technology-based learning, leadership, IS outsourcing and electronic commerce. He has papers published in Journal of Association for Information Systems, Journal of Management Information Systems, Communications of ACM, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Decision Support Systems, European Journal of Information Systems, Information and Management, Group Decision and Negotiation, International Journal of Information Management and Computers and Education.
Ou Liu is currently pursuing his Ph.D. degree in the Department of Information Systems, City University of Hong Kong. His current research interests include organizational decision support systems and model management.