2011 7th International Conference on IT in Asia (CITA)

Requirements of Knowledge Sharing for Group Decision Support System

Mohammud Nur Muse, Halina Mohamed Dahlan, Ab. Razak bin Che HussinDepartment of Information Systems

Faculty of Computer Science and Information SystemsUniversiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM)

Skudai, Johor Malaysiamaxnuur@hotmail.com, {halina, abrazak}@utm.my

Abstract—Group decision support systems (GDSS) have evolved from applications designed primarily to support decision making for groups. Indeed, it is generally accepted that improvements of group support systems is a longstanding interest to organizational researchers, containing solid practical as well as scientific significance. Within this practice, there is increasing challenge to improve the exchange of knowledge among group members in order to enhance GDSS capability of knowledge sharing. Therefore, the paper investigates the current GDSS situation and analyzing the requirements of knowledge sharing (KS) to enhance GDSS. It is hoped that these findings will aid to provide GDSS systems with the solid capability of knowledge sharing.

Keywords-GDSS; capabilities; requirements; knowledge sharing, decision making

I. INTRODUCTION

Recent advances in information and communication technologies (ICT) have made it easy to connect many people at different places in order to share knowledge. Individuals require sharing ideas and thoughts, coordinating strategies, and observing on the effort of others. Employees need exchanging documents, transmitting drafts, sending pictures, and communicating with multiple persons. Similarly, Group members need to solve problems together and make collective decisions. Business organization use information systems to encourage knowledge sharing among groups. Effective sharing activities can enhance the effectiveness and productivity of the group beyond what individuals can do separately.

The main challenge of groups appears is that decisions are complex and dependent on information especially when it is in a form of a group. On every meeting, fresh collection of dataand knowledge could be generated. Also, the combination of the decision making group may change: group members may leave, give resignation, or be removed. Newly recruited members of the group require learning how previous decisions were made and how information were accessed.

Another key challenge of groups is also group members are not in the same place at the same time with meetings are not easy to arrange quickly. Also, as knowledge can be ambiguous and time-consuming especially when people located far from each other; therefore, organizations cannot afford to collect and share knowledge drafted and maintained.

The process of sharing is increased by promoting the exchange among group members, and enlarges communication of groups. The exchanged data and information should be recorded. The recorded information and data should be generated in a form of knowledge to be used as explicit knowledge to groups. This research combines some helpful knowledge sharing concepts to enlarge the facilities of GDSS, including knowledge sharing requirements to enhance GDSS.

II. OVERVIEW OF GDSS

A. Definition of GDSSOver the past twenty years academics and industry

researchers have been working to develop computer systems which increase group effectivity and productivity. Therefore, the concept of GDSS has emerged to enhance groups and several definitions of Group Decision Support Systems (GDSS) exist, i.e., “is an interactive computer-based system that assist finding to solve formless problems by a group of decision makers operating as a group together’’ [1] or “as computer-based systems, that facilitates two or more clients slotted in a general mission (or goal) and that present an interface to a shared atmosphere’’ [2]. GDSS require real time access to shared data, computer applications which provide structure to group work, and advanced user interface concepts. The key to making groups more productive is to allow a high degree of parallel activity and access to shared data. Users are capable working; reaching decisions, and interchanging ideas in parallel and somewhat independently and in different places on sections of a shared task.

B. Current Situation of GDSSAs sub-type of Decision support systems, GDSS is widely

considered one of most important types of DSS especially with the addition of knowledge sharing. The majority of organizations accepted that improvement of group support systems is a longstanding interest to organizational researches. Within this domain, there is increasing interest to implement new technologies to increase information accessibility of organizational groups, in order to advance its productivity.

Over the past two decades till now, several studies have examined the impact of group technologies, management, group size, tasks and various additional aspects onenhancement of group productivity and satisfaction [3]. These

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2011 7th International Conference on IT in Asia (CITA)

studies on GDSS concentrated on group tasks, behavior, satisfaction, participation of members and decision quality.

In modern group support systems, a group decision occurs as the result of interpersonal communication which means the exchange of information among members. The communication activities in a decision-related meeting include opinion exploration, analyzing, socializing, information seeking, information giving, proposal development and negotiation [4].

Today GDSS is described by being adapted for a group of people who initiates collaboration in order to improve integrated systems which can develop complex decision making sense. This GDSS is classified within a time-place paradigm which means they can be same time at same place or different places at different times.

C. GDSS without knowledge SharingMost of researches done on GDSS concentrated on group

tasks, products, behavior, satisfaction, decision quality, and communication used or techniques accessed, but few researchfocused how knowledge could be shared or exchanged. Moreover a few research works concentrated on how this knowledge should be stored.

Knowledge sharing and information sharing may seem to be one and the same, but sharing are actually very different things. Information sharing provides the obtaining and exchanging of documents, data and information between groups, knowledge sharing is an activity or process through which knowledge, information, skill or expertise is exchanged among group members.

1) Information Sharing in GDSS: According to research conducted by [5] many presented studies on group decision support systems (GDSS), have examined the impacts of information exchange in GDSS groups with decision making. But they found a useful of researches assess information interchange in GDSS groups appealing in decision making activities [6, 7, 8].

GDSS groups were discovered to swap large amount of information generally more than oral groups [8] and were discovered to more likely exchange information to support their favorites than face-to-face groups [6]. Moreover, GSS

using groups do not employ information that was shared throughout the dialogue [7].

Individuals of a workgroup require being capable sharing information each other in different methods [9]. A single file on database of shared information can be formed, and each user can utilize database technology to retrieve the database.

Previous research found several problems to apply information sharing with the database. The first one is the complexity with accessing database technology to distribute information; the information does not match the database method. Information sharing technology comprise several various forms of information, counting transcripts, images, worksheets, databases, digital videos, and sounds which is difficult to put on shared database. Secondly when sharing information, a user may not retrieve appropriate information instantly and also apply information sharing efficiently demands, shared information on an ordinary source. Another problem with workgroup cooperation is that groups always keep changing.

III. ANALYZING THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF KNOWLEDGE SHARING FOR GDSS

To analyze the contribution of KS for GDSS a study has been conducted. This study presents the results of the data collected from various respondents from management level whom has been surveyed to their view regarding to the requirements of Knowledge Sharing (KS) in GDSS. This study utilized a descriptive analysis of the collected data from respondents. The analysis intends to use quantitative data. Respondents were asked to rank the importance these requirements from 1 being least important and 5 being most important.

To evaluate the importance of contribution of knowledge sharing, respondents agreed in common that knowledge sharing could enhance capability of GDSS. More specifically, respondents strongly agreed with 4.12 mean that KS have ability to store and keep expertise knowledge. While a number of respondents with 4.08 agreed that KS provides knowledge repository (KR) to store information of group members. The Table I summarizes the mean and standard deviation (SD) of each scale.

TABLE I. THE CONTRIBUTION OF KNOWLEDGE SHARING

Contribution of KS N Min Max Mean S.DIncreasing interaction between groups who need knowledge and those who can provide knowledge

25 3.00 5.00 3.92 .640

Group members can easily seek information of others 25 3.00 5.00 3.88 .725The existence of Knowledge repository 25 3.00 5.00 3.88 .665Providing Knowledge repository to store/retrieve information of group members 25 3.00 5.00 4.08 .702Ability of each group member to view other member’s idea 25 3.00 5.00 3.92 .640Ability to keep and store expertise knowledge 25 3.00 5.00 4.12 .665Group performance can be encouraged if knowledge clearly shared 25 3.00 5.00 4.04 .675Group productivity can be encouraged if knowledge clearly shared 25 3.00 5.00 4.04 .675Group decision making can be increased if knowledge shared 25 3.00 5.00 3.92 .702Research groups can benefited from GDSS if clearly linked with knowledge sharing

25 3.00 5.00 4.00 .707

Providing knowledge management systems. 25 2.00 5.00 4.00 .763N= number of respondents

2011 7th International Conference on IT in Asia (CITA)

IV. REQUIREMENTS OF KNOWLEDGE SHARING IN GDSS

A. Definition of Knowledge SharingKnowledge is nowadays considered as an issue of

production jointly with various fixed assets such as territory lands, labors and principal capitals. While the globe shifts towards a ‘knowledge-based financial’, knowledge is being regarded as the major core to drive this new financial system. Therefore, the achievement of financial systems in the future is going to be established on how companies or organizational groups access, exercise and manage knowledge successfully [10]. Knowledge sharing (KS) is defined as the process of exchanging knowledge (skills, experience, and understanding) among people, community, organization, or groups [11].Before groups share knowledge, individual group members should follow several knowledge sharing processes. These process types includes a serial steps in order to share knowledge and information or data. These steps include knowledge acquisition and knowledge storing.

B. Knowledge Acquisition Knowledge acquisition is the process of acquiring

knowledge from a human expert to be used by an expert system. This process is commonly defined to include the obtaining and extracting the knowledge from human expert [12].

In most organizations, groups face difficult situations in order to acquire knowledge. One reason for this is that most of group members reluctant to give knowledge especially when knowledge is required from human experts. Therefore, acquiring knowledge from group of experts is far from easy.

According to [12] process of knowledge acquisition in a GDSS setting can be classified nearly four stages: knowledge acquisition planning, extraction of knowledge, analyzing knowledge, and verification of knowledge, as demonstrated in Figure 1 below.

Figure 1. Knowledge Acquisition Phases inside GDSS Environment setting [12]

1) Knowledge acquisition planning: The main objective of this stage is analyzing different knowledge acquisition methods and designing appropriate processes to obtain knowledge. Most important steps in this stage contain to understand the domain, to define problem range, to identify the category of application, to analyze characteristics of the problem, to analyze uniqueness of tools supporting the group, to develop process forms, to identify experts, and to plan sessions of knowledge acquisition. After this stage is complete, the knowledge gaining period is recognized and processes to perform knowledge gaining sessions are extended.

2) Knowledge analysis: The main objective of the knowledge analysis stage is to examine the outcomes of knowledge acquisition meetings. Concept of users or classifying structure are intended to analyze and to formalize into illustrations which may be in the structure of regulations, documents, items, dealings, and kind of networks.

3) Knowledge verification: This stage concentrates to verify acquired ideas, and categorization configurations with the individual expertise. In this stage, a formal representation is offered to experts. Demonstrated system prototype to the consumers and individual expertise is also functional.

From explanation of knowledge acquisition process, it is clear that knowledge gain or acquiring is one of the mainly significant actions in the growth in knowledge related techniques. The knowledge gaining from various individual expertise is essential at times when only single expert cannotbe accepted amid the requisite skill and subdivisions related the area knowledge exist within higher than single individual. The acquirement of knowledge from various skilled may be applied in two behaviors: obtain knowledge beginning every expert in person or by a group of expertise.

C. Knowledge Storing Data and information acquired from or exchanged between

group member individuals should be stored. When an organization groups reach the several meetings or different process of decision making, these created agenda should be recorded in central tool.

Since group members are human beings, they will retire and their individual knowledge remains with them. If the group knowledge is not recorded in time, then it is wasted and finally disappears. Therefore, keeping the knowledge of group members is a major concern in this study. Developing knowledge among group members and organizations is a significant issue. Information technology can contribute to the dynamic procedures of knowledge creation, preservation, propagation and absorption in an organization. GDSS can promote creation of knowledge in focus groups by capturing and enhancing more ideas, and thus enhance knowledge creation in terms of the collection of related ideas [13].

The recorded knowledge information in GDSS is kept in a central tool called knowledge repository.

KA approach

Knowledge representations

Concepts

Knowledge Acquisition Planning

Knowledge Extraction

Knowledge Analysis

Knowledge Verification

Redesign

Reformulation

Refinements

2011 7th International Conference on IT in Asia (CITA)

1) Knowledge RepositoryKnowledge repository stands for a method or system style

that resides and generates an assembly of commercial intellectual capitals. Knowledge repository offers two critical operations, first function is storing and integrating different knowledge forms and issue plans, and the second function is housing or accommodating different input/output operations to allow consumers observe, modify, and produce fresh issue plans from presented knowledge forms [14].

The stored knowledge can be held in this repository, which is likely to be explicitly transmitted or open for sharing.Repository also may reduce the information overload by decreasing the ambiguity.

The electronic knowledge repositories in GDSS is able to keep group knowledge created from group meetings and also offer this to all group members participating in the meetings, who want to retrieve previous information or knowledge for references.

The importance of storing information in groups has been enlarged by the use of current industrial organizations, which could not carry on without it or without ordered information. Therefore, the enhancement of groups is dependent on how they exchange and share information. Hence, shared repository is needed to implement in order to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of groups.

The GDSS together with repository is likely to offer large information processing support. With GDSS motivate research,academics with an extraordinary occasion to tell broad details of group member interactions [15]. Hence, GDSS can assist the electronic acquisition of knowledge and purify individual experts' knowledge in a parallel fashion [12]. This generated knowledge is transferred into explicit knowledge.

V. CONCLUSION

Knowledge sharing is important but it is not easy particularly when it is occurring in a form of a group. In promoting knowledge sharing, group members or individuals should undertake a number of processes including acquiring knowledge and storing. In knowledge acquisition, groups acquire knowledge from human expert. This task is to extract and obtain knowledge from multiple individual experts. While data and information acquired from or exchanged between group members must be recorded in order to turn into stored knowledge. The recorded knowledge information in GDSS is kept in a central tool called knowledge repository. Thus, recorded knowledge in repository can be easily shared and exchanged between groups. The analysis presented in this paper showed that knowledge sharing contributes to enhance GDSS capabilities.

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