Decision Modeling: A Systematic Approach to Evaluating Key Factors in the Choices We Make

Decision modeling attempts to replicate the actual behavior of decision making. A model first identifies specific criteria to be used in making a decision, then allows the decision makers to assess how well competing options meet those criteria. For example, when purchasing a product, such as an automobile, a consumer might consider price, quality, service, and options. In decision modeling, each attribute is weighted by its relative importance, and each car model is judged on how well it matches each criterion.

Decision modeling can also explore the market potential of new technologies by assessing how well the new technology meets criteria already established by the marketplace. In these applications, decision modeling quantifies the potential of a product or technology to gain share from products already on the market.

The behavior of a large number of systems is determined, to a great extent, by decisions made by people or groups within those systems. In population systems, the behavior of couples of childbearing age determines the dynamics of the system; in market systems, the collective decisions of consumers constitute market behavior; in industries, such as the electric utility industry, decisions by corporate executives on generation expansion determine many characteristics of that system. Thus, in order to understand the behavior of systems, we must understand the nature of decision making within the system.

Strategic-management professor Michel Godet has also made some interesting additions to the technique of …

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Publication information: Article title: Decision Modeling: A Systematic Approach to Evaluating Key Factors in the Choices We Make. Contributors: Not available. Magazine title: The Futurist. Volume: 44. Issue: 1 Publication date: January-February 2010. Page number: 45+. © 1999 World Future Society. COPYRIGHT 2010 Gale Group.

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