Tools for Supporting Responsible Decision-Making?

Abstract

In this paper, we assess the characteristics decision support tools should have in order to support “responsible decision-making”. To this end, we first describe responsible decision-making. We argue that responsibility relates to both the outcome and the process of decision-making. On the basis of this description, we discuss which conditions should be in place so as to increase the possibility of responsible decision-making. Next, we discuss the characteristics of tools supporting responsible decision-making in terms of their ability to support the realization of the required conditions for responsible decision-making. We use these characteristics to identify three types of tools: “responsible”, “neutral”, and “irresponsible” tools. We illustrate the assessment of the responsibility of support tools by looking at group model building.