Measuring How Decision Support Systems Improve Newsvendors’ Performance: The Subjects’ Version

Diego D’Urso, Ferdinando Chiacchio and Evangelia Demerouti
Additional contact information
Diego D’Urso: Department of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering, Università degli Studi di Catania, 95125 Catania, Italy
Ferdinando Chiacchio: Department of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering, Università degli Studi di Catania, 95125 Catania, Italy
Evangelia Demerouti: Department of Industrial Engineering and Innovation Sciences, Eindhoven University of Technology, 5600 MB Eindhoven, The Netherlands

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 18, 1-16

Abstract: Despite the emerging contribution of machine automation, artificial intelligence and information systems, humans remain yet the most fragile ring of any organization. Decision support systems are widespread, supporting us to decide among uncertainties, such as weather conditions, suppliers’ performances and financial opportunities, but how humans take into account this information and, most of all, how they trust their own management knowledge is a controversial issue. This paper assesses, by means of a controlled experiment and ex post interviews, how individuals consider and use decision support systems in the context of the Newsvendor Problem. In accordance with prior research, the results show that individuals’ order quantities are pull-to-center biased. Moreover, ex post direct interviews suggest that (i) the individuals’ trust in decision support systems is not blind; (ii) individuals do not play the business game as a real task, (iii) they are biased by the type of incentive promised and (iv) they seem not skilled or trained enough. Ex post interviews shed a new light on controlled human experiments: they should be better analyzed and re-engineered.

Keywords: controlled human experiments; ex post interviews; behavioral operations management (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/18/10251/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/18/10251/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:18:p:10251-:d:635160

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().