On the Plausibility and Scope of Expert Systems in Management

Over the last decade there have been several efforts at building knowledge based "expertsystemsA¢Â¬Â?, mostly in the scientific and medical arenas. Despite the fact that almost all suchsystems are in their experimental stages, designers are optimistic about their eventual success.In the last few years, there have been many references to the possibility of expert systems inthe management literature. However, what is lacking is a clear theoretical perspective on howvarious management problems differ in nature from problems in other domains, and theimplications of these differences for knowledge based decision support systems formanagement. In this paper, I examine some of these differences, what they suggest in terms ofthe functionality that a computer based system must have in order to support organizationaldecision making, and the scope of such a system as a decision aid. The discussion is groundedin the context of a computer based system called PLANET that exhibits some of the desiredfunctionality.