Article: Conflict Management and Group decision support systems

Article: Conflict Management and Group decision support systems
Marshall Scott Poole, Michael Homes, Gerardine DeSanctis
January 1988 CSCW '88: Proceedings of the 1988 ACM conference on Computer-supported cooperative work
Publisher: ACM

This interesting article discusses how Group decision support systems combine communication, computers and decision support technologies to support problem formulation and solution in conflict management within groups.

It first states that productive conflict management results in consensus on the final solution and amount of change in positions during discussions.
The article then details seven distinct effects, positive and negative, that GDSS may have on conflict management.

Some of the positive effects are GDss’s equalize member participation, GDSS procedures make processes and roles in conflict management clearer and GDSS’s have procedures for brainstorming or defining solutions that could stimulate the group to explore a wide range of alternatives.

The article further explores the research done between manual and computer systems aided conflict resolution and concludes that each has its own positive strengths and suggests the importance of structure and design as a critical tool for GDSS success in conflict management.