A structure for management decision making

An examination by the authors of the complexity of business decision making led to the conclusion that an organized information gathering and analysis mechanism is necessary to cope with this complexity. In this paper a proposed structure of the decision-making process is presented in the context of an R&D organization engaged in many different technical programs and projects. The foundation of this structure is an effective management team. On this foundation rest the main supports of the structure, which include a model representing the R&D process, a technological forecasting scheme to provide an indication of future direction, the project proposing and planning activities to provide the technical information needed for decision making, a set of quantitized judgments to which analytic tools can be applied, an algorithm for optimum resource allocation, and finally, a hybrid decision-making technique. An experiment has been performed with this method and the result, through not reported here, was very encouraging.