Personal DSS in small enterprises

A ‘personal DSS’ is here defined on the basis of the feature and applications that are actually ‘in-use’ and valued by users, and not on the degree of structure of the problem it addresses. This paper presents the results of an empirical investigation of selected application, task, and user determinants of personal DSS effectiveness in the context of the small business. Managers were found to be more successful when they develop their own numeric applications using spreadsheets to provide greater analytical support for decision-making. Task autonomy and microcomputer training were also found to have a significant effect, both directly and indirectly through their relationship with the application characteristics.