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The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the brainstorming component of Statement of Auditing Standards (SAS) No. 99 influences decision aid use and reliance, and the effectiveness of fraud risk assessment.

The research framework links the influences of the fraud assessment setting and decision aid reliance. The hypotheses are tested in an experiment with two manipulated factors: setting (group or individual) and decision aid (provided or not provided).

The results of the study provide insight on how the brainstorming impacts fraud risk assessment, decision aid use and decision aid reliance. The results show that groups using a decision aid with fraud risk factors demonstrate superior decision quality and effectiveness even with lower decision aid reliance.

The influence of the setting (group or individual) on the fraud evaluation and detection is highlighted.

This paper will be informative for auditors and firms involved in designing an efficient and effective fraud risk assessment.

This paper integrates the fraud risk assessment and decision aid literature to evaluate decision quality and effectiveness of group fraud risk assessment.

Decision making is inherently stressful since the decision maker must choose between potentially conflicting alternatives with unique hazards and uncertain outcomes. Whereas decision aids such as decision support systems (DSS) can be beneficial in stressful scenarios, decision makers sometimes misuse them during decision making, leading to suboptimal outcomes. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between stress, decision making and decision aid use.

The authors conduct an extensive multi-disciplinary review of decision making and DSS use through the lens of stress and examine how stress, as perceived by decision makers, impacts their use or misuse of DSS even when such aids can improve decision quality. Research questions examine underlying sources of stress in managerial decision making that influence decision quality, relationships between a decision maker’s perception of stress, DSS use/misuse, and decision quality, and implications for research and practice on DSS design and capabilities.

The study presents a conceptual model that provides an integrative behavioral view of the impact of a decision maker’s perceived stress on their use of a DSS and the quality of their decisions. The authors identify critical knowledge gaps and propose a research agenda to improve decision quality and use of DSS by considering a decision maker’s perceived stress.

This study provides a previously unexplored view of DSS use and misuse as shaped by the decision and job stress experienced by decision makers. Through the application of four theories, the review and its findings highlight key design principles that can mitigate the negative effects of stressors on DSS use.

The purpose of this study is to investigate consumer reactions to professionals who use decision aids to make recommendations. The authors propose that people react negatively to decision aids only when they are used in place of human expert judgment. When used in combination with expert judgment, decision aids are not perceived negatively and may even enhance service evaluations.

Three online experiments are presented. Participants indicated their perceptions regarding the recommendation strategy of professionals and their impressions of these professionals using one of three strategies: one based on expertise only, one based on decision aids only and a combination of the two (hybrid approach). Both within and between-subjects designs were used.

Contrary to previous research that has found a negative reaction to professionals who use decision aids, the authors find that consumers actually appreciate these professionals, as long as the use of decision aids does not replace expert judgment. The authors also find that when people are given the opportunity to compare a pure expert judgment approach with a hybrid approach (decision aid in combination with expert judgment), they prefer the latter.

Although findings should extend to various contexts, this research is limited to the three contexts examined and to the type of use of decision aid described.

It has significant practical implication, as decision aids have been shown to improve decision accuracy, but previous research had indicated that consumers view these professionals in a negative way. The current research more clearly delineates the situations under which negative reactions are likely to occur and makes recommendations regarding circumstances in which reactions are actually quite positive.

Reactions to professionals using decision aids have been investigated outside the marketing literature. However, this is the first work to show that consumers actually have positive reactions to professionals using decision aids, as long as they do not replace expert judgment.

This study extends prior accounting research on decision aids (DAs) relating to face validity. Specifically, this study aims to examine the effects of face validity through the presence of two levels of bias in DA output. The presence of bias in a DA will not affect how statistically informative an aid is but will decrease the face validity. The findings suggest that non-expert DA users recognize the bias in the DA’s suggestions as evidenced by users’ low agreement with the aid; however, they do not adjust for the bias in their performance, suggesting that non-expert users do not learn from the DA.

This repeated-measures experimental design allows us to examine performance effects over time in response to different levels of bias in the DA output. The participants in the study are provided with outcome feedback to examine learning effects.

The findings suggest that non-expert DA users recognize the bias in the DA’s suggestions as evidenced by users’ low agreement with the aid; however, they do not adjust for the bias in their performance, suggesting that non-expert users do not learn from the DA. Although users of an unbiased DA strongly agree with the DA’s output, individual performance deteriorates over time. Initially, the users of an unbiased DA perform better than those who use a biased DA; however, over time, the performance of users of an unbiased aid deteriorates and the performance of users of the biased aid does not improve.

Companies developing DAs may need to consider the effects of using a DA under circumstances different from those under which the aid was developed and that may lead to the biased DA output. This study has implications for firms that design, develop and use DAs.

This study considers a yet unexamined face validity issue – observable bias in DA output. This study examines deterministic DAs designed to assist the decision-maker through their ability to combine multiple cues in a systematic and consistent manner. This study has implications for firms that design, develop and use DAs. Firms need to consider the effects of using a DA under circumstances different from those under which the aid is developed, thereby, potentially leading to biased DA output. Each additional variable added to the DA will be associated with an incremental cost in a DA’s development, use and modification. The results of this study provide insights contributing to the information available for cost–benefit analyses conducted when developing a DA or when considering the modification of existing aid. Failure to change a DA because of face validity issues alone may result in a decline in user performance. Thus, the cost of modifying a DA must be weighed against the benefits resulting from improved performance. This study contributes insights into how users’ responses to DA bias could affect the assessments of the benefits of including an omitted variable in a DA.

Develops and tests a general model for understanding the influence of query‐based decision aids (QBDA) on consumer decision making in the electronic commerce environment. The results show that the use of well‐designed query‐based decision aids leads to increased satisfaction with the decision process and increased confidence in judgements. The number of stages of phased narrowing of the consideration set was higher in the case of subjects who had access to the query‐based decision aids. The mediating variables through which this influence occurs are size of the consideration set, similarity among the alternatives in the consideration set, cognitive decision effort, and perceived cost savings. The size of the consideration set and the similarity among the alternatives in the consideration set were higher in the case of subjects who had access to the query‐based decision aid. Subjects who had access to the query‐based decision aid perceived an increased cost savings and a lower cognitive decision effort associated with the purchase decision. This research is done in the context of consumers searching for information on the World Wide Web prior to the purchase of cars.

Decision aids (DAs) in online retail stores ease consumers' information processing. However, online consumers do not use all decision aids in purchase decision-making. While the literature has documented the effects of individual decision aids or two decision aids at a time, no study has compared the efficacy of multiple decision aids simultaneously. Also, very few studies have looked at the use of decision aids for consumers with maximizing and satisficing tendencies. Hence, this study aims to understand the preferences of maximizers and satisficers towards online decision aids during the choice-making process.

This is an observational study with 60 individuals who were asked to purchase either a search-based or an experience-based product online. Participants' browsing actions and verbalizations during online shopping, were recorded and analysed using NVivo, and later the use of decision aids was mapped along their choice process.

Consumer's preference of decision aids varies across the two stages of the choice process (that is, consideration set formation and evaluation & choice). In their choice formation, maximizers use different decision aids in both stages, that is, filter tool and in-website search tool for search products, and collaborative filtering-based recommender systems and eWOM for experience products. Satisficers used more decision aids as compared to maximizers across the two stages for both product types.

This study is an exploratory attempt to understand how consumers use multiple decision aids present on e-commerce websites.

States that any decision aid assumes certain characteristics about the problem it is applied to. Proposes that the marketing situation is particularly one of aggregation – the marketing manager is continually facing the problem of aggregating individual behaviour into market responses which is the key determinant of his actions. Concludes that the fact that operational managers continue to use some techniques and reject others may not be related so much to ignorance of more sophisticated methods as to an explicit or implicit assessment of their relevance to the practical problems. The basic aim of the research is to investigate further this aspect in the area of decision aids to marketing.

Basing one's business decision on an approach that relies on experience may work sometimes. Experience is a useful part of the process, but it may also lock the decision maker into a method that cannot lead to an innovative solution. An alternative to this experience‐based (linear) way of problem solving is a certain skillful way of thinking known as lateral thinking. This paper aims to present a simple alternative approach to managerial decision making.

Here lateral thinking is defined as methods of thinking concerned with changing concepts and perception. Various tests are suggested that show how it might be measured. These tests were originally developed to identify creative thinking ability. One of these tests is used in an illustrative decision aid to reduce a common decision‐making “bias” labeled “hindsight bias”.

The simple decision aid reduced the hindsight effect for those decision makers who were deemed to be limited in their lateral thinking ability. Those who could already think laterally were not affected by the decision aid. The decision aid was decision‐making neutral for them.

Often, when attempting to improve decision making, the focus is on providing better information or models. Rarely is the cognitive ability of the manager specifically considered. Here, a simple decision aid has been suggested that appears to help managers adopt a different perception of the decision situation. For managers and organizations this is a low cost opportunity to achieve better results.

The innovation expected by clients is identified as a business success factor of industrial companies in the current decade and the accountability of it is primarily attributable to Research and Development (R&D), which makes it a strategic topic for studies on the decision-making process. In light of this, the purpose of this paper is to present a decision aiding methodology used to support R&D management in the technology-based company, specialised in refrigeration solutions and world leader in the hermetic compressor market.

It is an exploratory study and has deductive-inductive logic and uses a quail-quantitative approach. It uses the Knowledge Development Process Constructivist (ProKnow-C) to systemically revise the literature surrounding the theme in order to identify research opportunities in the subject and adopts the Multi-Criteria Decision Aiding Constructivist (MCDA-C) methodology as an instrument of organisational performance evaluation to fulfil the research opportunities identified.

In the theoretical aspect, this research fulfilled the opportunities observed in recent and qualified literature about R&D performance evaluation. The paper also offers practical implications for the performance evaluation in R&D, since the methodology allowed the R&D manager to build knowledge to understand the consequences of his decisions in the criteria deemed important by himself.

The importance of this work covers academic and practical interests, as it documents the application of MCDA-C and increases knowledge concerning R&D management, whilst developing a recurrent tool of decision aiding in the context of the company studied.

Although noticeable improvements have been made in global health in recent years, the distribution is uneven throughout the world and many developing and low-income countries lack access to required medicine and vaccines. Thus, a model to strategically source vaccines for these nations can contribute a great deal. This paper aims to present an extensive review of strategic sourcing literature, and to identify the criteria and available models in making strategic sourcing decisions. The purpose is to develop a decision making framework for future empirical study of humanitarian aid networks, more specifically, sourcing and distribution of vaccines in developing countries.

A thorough review of several purchasing and supply chain management (SCM) journals was conducted to identify the strategic criteria in making sourcing decisions, hence “strategic sourcing”. In line with this, a number of sourcing strategies were reviewed to find the relevant strategic criteria. Secondary data from practice were also investigated for special characteristics of vaccine supply chains in humanitarian aid networks. Articles were then scrutinized and results categorized in order to develop a framework for future empirical studies.

The findings show the historical development of strategic sourcing and the criteria in making strategic sourcing decisions. More recent studies, while taking a look back in history, have revealed a mix of strategies for more flexible models. Quality has been noted to be a strategic criterion for sourcing vaccines and this has caused the supply market to be dispersed on a global scale.

Considering the extensive number of academic publications, due to the focus of this study being sourcing within humanitarian aid networks, a number of academic journals in logistics/SCM/sourcing were reviewed.

A decision making framework is presented for sourcing vaccines within the humanitarian sector. The criteria in making strategic sourcing decisions are further re-evaluated and a base model proposed. The framework will be used for further research on sourcing in the humanitarian aid sector as well as practical implications.