Subjective understanding in strategic decision making: An information systems perspective

Decision makers and people in general, are constantly involved with understanding, formulating, and solving problems. Many of the problems faced by decision makers fall into the ill-structured/ill-defined category-as contrasted with well-structured/well-defined problems. This is especially true of problems faced by strategic decision makers. These problems routinely challenge the cognitive capacities of managers. Managers meet these challenges with limited information-processing capabilities. Decision makers perform various activities that help them understand ill-structured problems. These activities to a large extent are ‘cognitive’ in nature. It is argued that IS support provided to managers ‘through’ their ‘cognitive orientations’ might facilitate understanding of ill-structured problems. A new concept called the ‘cognitive lens’ is used to describe these cognitive orientations from an IS perspective. In conjunction with this notion, a classification of IS support in terms of a continuum of inquiry models is proposed. These inquiry modes-introspective, dialectic, and eclectic inquiry-operate on cognitive lenses stored and maintained in a ‘cognitive lens support system.’ The system architecture and the functional support required to facilitate the different inquiry modes are also described.