Mapping the intellectual structure of research in decision support systems through author cocitation analysis (1971–1993)

This study applies factor analysis of an author cocitation frequency matrix derived from a database file that consists of a total of 23,768 cited reference records taken from 944 citing articles. Factor analysis extracted eleven factors consisting of six major areas of DSS research (group DSS, foundations, model management, interface systems, multicriteria DSS, and implementation) and five contributing disciplines (multiple criteria decision making, cognitive science, organizational science, artificial intelligence, and systems science). This research provides hard evidence that the decision support system has made meaningful progress over the past two decades and is in the process of solidifying its domain and demarcating its reference disciplines. Especially, much progress has been made in the subareas of model management such as representation, model base processing, model integration, and artificial intelligence application to model management leading towards the development of a theory of models. To facilitate the transition from the pre- to post-paradigm period in DSS research, this study has completed important groundwork.