¹Department of Management Science, University of Strathclyde, Strathclyde, UK

Correspondence: Alec Morton, Block 60, Toa Payoh Lorong 4, #28-111, Singapore 310060, Republic of Singapore. Tel: +65 96493546; E-mail: alec_morton@bcs.org.uk

Received February 2001; Revised 1 June 2002; Accepted 3 February 2003.

Abstract

There are (at least) two distinct traditions within group decision support: what we will call the 'Technology-driven' tradition, which originates in the Information Systems discipline, and what we will call the 'Model-driven' tradition, which originates in OR/MS. Although proponents of the two traditions share many of the same objectives, in the past there has been little communication between the two groups. In this paper, we describe the basic distinction between the two traditions in terms of two primary themes: research focus (i.e., what the researchers find of interest) and research philosophy and methodology (i.e., how researchers go about studying their chosen subject matter); and we trace these implications of these differences through the key concepts of each tradition. We conclude by arguing that there are many opportunities for synergy between the two traditions.