Group Decision-Making in the Context of Cloud Computing

As Cloud Computing (CC) has been at the top of organizations’ decision-making agenda, a wide range of research has sought to support decision-making in the context of CC. Thereby research approached the issue of decision-making from a rather static perspective by identifying factors (e.g., price, availability) that benefit or hinder organizational decisions towards CC, or creating mathematical models that support the selection of the 'right' provider and service respectively. However, decision-making in organizations is a dynamic phenomenon that consists of a process with various phases in which a group of individuals works together in order to decide on a preferred alternative that is afterwards implemented within the organization. Accordingly, this work takes on a dynamic perspective by investigating how cloud service characteristics affect organizational group decision-making in the context of CC. Thereby this exploratory study revealed that the self-service characteristic of CC affected the communication processes between the customers and providers, the available knowledge of the decision-making group, and the size of the group during requirements evaluation.