Decision support or decision making The critical decision roles of IS in autonomous vehicles

The era of autonomous vehicles has arrived. However, the relationship between information systems (IS) and the driving decisions of autonomous vehicles remains unclear. What decision roles do IS serve in driving autonomous vehicles? How do these roles influence the driving-decision quality of autonomous vehicles? To address this gap, we profile three major decision roles of IS in autonomous vehicles: decision maker, decision supporter and decision operator. Our profiling is based on a process-oriented viewpoint that integrates several classical decision theories. We utilise a computational simulation and experiment approach to explore and compare the possible effects of IS roles on the decision quality of autonomous vehicles. Our main findings suggest that each IS role has its distinctive strengths and weaknesses because no single role can consistently dominate the others in generating the best decision quality.