About this issue

THREE of the articles in this issue revolve about a common theme, management decision making. This has been a recurrent theme in this Transactions, not because of the amount of time managers actually spend on making decisions, but of the importance of this management function for the organization and its effectiveness and survival. Indeed, people conducting studies of the behavior and time-expenditure patterns of managers often have difficulty detecting actual decisionmaking acts, although we know that many decisions are being made continually. Much time is reported and observed to be spent, on the other hand, in preparing for decision making and recovering from the effects of bad decisions.