Four principal factors affecting rational information processing behavior in organizations are discussed. These are: (1) the nature and attributes of the messages received from the Management Information and Decision System (MIDS); (2) The personal qualities and attitudes of the manager himself;...

A conditional analytic technique for evaluating interdependent decisions, based on Bellman's 'Principle of Optimality' is proposed. The procedure computes both the present and future impacts of a decision and permits: (1) each decision to be evaluated independently; (2) an accurate and more...

Although quadratic programming (QP) is often studied as a methodology by decision scientists, little emphasis seems to be given to the type of decision science problems that can be so modeled. This paper reviews and extends some of the applied and methodological areas where QP is applicable,...

A primary cause for the failure of both formal and informal management information systems to live up to expectations stems from the designer's lack of awareness or improper conception of the interfaces existing between information and man, its user. This underscores the need for a better...

Linear aggregation models employing unit and equal weights have been shown to be superior to human decisions in a surprising range of decision situations. In addition, decisions based on these models have often been found to be superior to those based on linear regression models (LRMs). This...

Utility functions for profits and losses are obtained on 14 practicing auditors. Data were elicited through personal interviews with audit partners and seniors. The appropriate utility functions that describe the risk characteristics of the auditors and fit the certainty equivalent responses are...

An experiment involving a simulated financial lending organization was used to compare subjects' decisions regarding the degree to which the organization should be informationally centralized, with that of an optimal decision rule based on a normative model. Typically, subjects overdecentralized...

A principal problem in systems studies concerns the development of models that will be accepted and used by decision makers in organizations. Regression models derived from managers' past behavior offer promise in overcoming this problem for many repetitive types of decisions. Employing a...

We have observed when applying Value Efficiency Analysis [21] that decision makers wish to provide preference information related to existing rather than virtual (efficient) units. This observation motivated us to develop an approach based on the preference comparisons of existing units. The...