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Many of the problem situations facing organizations today are complex and ill-structured, lacking a definitive structure and formulation. The attempt to clearly understand and make sense of these situations is a difficult, but crucial, early requirement for effective problem solving. Problem-solving theory suggests that element finding--identifying the elements or variables that are relevant to a problem situation--is one of the earliest essential divergent activities of sense making. This paper details a theoretical framework synthesizing the work of a number of problem-solving research streams to highlight how brainstorming, although with distinct objectives, can be used as a divergent tool during very different phases of the problem-solving process. Using this framework, we empirically explored the impact of electronic brainstorming--a feature of group support systems--on element finding as groups attempted to identify the elements of an ill-structured situation facing them.
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