Decision-aiding demonstrated

The past decade has seen new (or renewed) interest in various approaches to helping decision-making teams, such as cognitive mapping, strategic choice, strategic assumption surfacing and testing, soft systems methodology, conflict analysis and decision conferencing. Unlike traditional OR, these focus largely on the process of decision, with the consultant acting as facilitator to the team. Unlike the ‘process’ approaches developed within organization development, however, they also use models of decision situations, to enhance communication and creativity within the group and to assist in the development of shared understanding. The models thus serve as vehicles for learning about complex situations and for choosing how to respond.