Abstract

The objective of this research is to map the scholarly landscape of the decision support systems (DSS) field. Author cocitation analysis (ACA) of a total of 3,602 citing DSS articles over the past 43 years (1969–2012) reconstructed a bird's eye view of the decision support system field through the identification of a group of 339 influential and responsible DSS researchers. ACA concludes that the DSS community has achieved several important prerequisite conditions defined by Kuhn to advance DSS as a coherent field.

Cocitation analysis uncovered several decision support system research subspecialties and revealed an ongoing change in the intellectual structure of the DSS field. It also identified a dynamic dimension of the DSS field to account for the ongoing changes in its "disciplinary matrix".

Longitudinal Author Cocitation Mapping: The Changing Structure of Decision Support Systems Research (1969–2012)

Longitudinal Author Cocitation Mapping focuses on specific aspects of the decision support systems (DSS) history by means of an empirical assessment of the DSS literature over three consecutive time periods: 1969–1990, 1991–2005, and 2006–2012.

This includes:

• Patterns of social constructions (the intellectual structure and) of the DSS field:

  • Major schools of thoughts
  • Cumulative research tradition.
  • Reference disciplines.

• On-going dynamic changes in the intellectual structure.

• Diffusion of ideas:

  • From the reference disciplines to DSS research subspecialties.
  • Within DSS research subspecialties.