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BUSINESS GEOMATICS DECISION SUPPORT By Tony Hernandez, CSCA There exists a wide range of perspectives regarding organizational structure and the process of decision-making (Morgan, 1986). Some view organizational decision-making as a largely rational and mechanistic process, while others emphasize the importance of conflict and manipulation within organizations and stress the disordered nature of decision-making activity. As Chia (1994, p. 781) recognizes, decision-making as an organizational concept has had 'a colourful and controversial career spanning some 50 years'. The decision literature provides four common models of decision-making:
RATIONAL At the centre of the rational model is the assumption that the organization has common goals and objectives (March, 1976). Decisions are seen simply as the result of 'purposive choices made by consistent actors' (Allison, 1971, p. 11), and thus behaviour reflects purpose. The rational model portrays the decision-process as 'intentional, consequential and optimizing' (March, 1988, p. 1) and assumes that an organization knows all alternatives, the probability distribution of consequences conditional on each alternative, and the subjective value of each possible consequence. Decisions are, therefore, made by selecting the alternative with the highest expected value. BUREAUCRATIC The bureaucratic model of decision-making dismisses some of the assumptions of the rational model as unrealistic, and confines the informational requirements of the organization to sets of standardized operating procedures, as opposed to continuous search as is the case in the rational model. The bureaucratic model thus views goals as systems of constraints that decisions must satisfy, with decisions seen 'less as deliberate choices and more as outputs of large organizations functioning according to standard patterns of behaviour' (Allison, 1971, p. 79). ANARCHIC The anarchic model departs significantly from the previous two perspectives in that the central assumption is that there are no clear organizational goals or objectives being maximized (or satisfied) through choice; and also, no powerful actors with defined or historic preferences who possess resources through which to seek to obtain these preferences. In simple terms, the anarchic model presents the decision-process as a virtual 'free-for-all', characterized more by randomness than rationality. POLITICAL The political model is characterized by organizational conflict and sub-unit coalition. The model has been developed largely from work by Cyert and March (1959, 1963), they argue that 'most organizations most of the time exist and thrive with considerable latent conflict of goals' (1963, p. 117). The organization is therefore viewed as an arena of conflict, populated with 'multiple actors with inconsistent preferences' (March, 1988, p.5), and divided or organized into 'collective interest groups and sub-units' (Baldrigde, 1971, p. 25). As Hirschheim (1985, p. 279) noted, organizations are 'not rational and manifestly rule following, they are social arenas where power, ritual and myth predominate'. Management scientists have favored the political model in that it appears to mirror the decisional reality for the majority of businesses. Specifically, decision-making can be seen as the outcome of interactions amongst a series of sub-unit coalition groups that are typically reflected internally in the organization's structure, and externally by a range of stakeholders. ROLE OF INFORMATION The importance attached to 'information' within organizational decision-making has significant implications in determining the role of decision support, data mining and visualization technologies. The rational and bureaucratic perspectives adopt the classical 'theory of information' within a decision making context, where it is assumed that organizations use information to highlight potential problems and threats to the organization. Once isolated, further information collection and analysis are undertaken to gain a detailed understanding of problems and provide a range of possible solutions (choices), and decisions are made in the light of such information. The political, and to a lesser extent the anarchic, models of decision making view information and associated systems as providing signals of comprehensive decision making, that are symbolically embedded within an organization's decision making behavior. The decisional reality for many businesses, as March (1991) summarizes, is that they: (a) gather information but do not use it; (b) ask for more and ignore it; and, (c) gather and process a great deal of information that has little or no relevance to decisions. Current methods of spatial data analysis and visual display do not facilitate interactive exploration of data, and serve to isolate the decision-maker as recipient of static information as opposed to an analytical actor, gathering information for knowledge-creation. Existing research highlights the shortfalls of the traditional information science approach. Technological developments have enabled the development of new 'visual' approaches to decision support that aim to harness the intuitive cognitive powers of decision-makers.
(Based on Pfeffer, 1981 and Campbell and Masser, 1995)
(Amended: Heywood et al., 1998; Grimshaw, 1994; Eason, 1988)
(Based on Pfeffer, 1981 and Campbell and Masser, 1995)
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