Reverse Decision Making: An Interpretive Framework for Pragmatic Decision Making

Abstract

Decision making in Engineering Management suffers from Mitroff’s Type III error; solving the wrong problem precisely, Mitroff (1998). Engineering Management requires a holistic interpretation of theory to provide for the diversity in decision making, often imposed by the pragmatic nature of the situation. As a multidisciplinary field Engineering Management challenges decision makers’ ability to explain phenomena within the aggregate of each individual disciplinary boundary. Whether the failure is from the intractable nature of the individual disciplines that make-up Engineering Management or through the efforts of integrating misaligned perspectives generated from each discipline, Engineering Management suffers from the ensuing uncertainty and complexity that challenge decision makers. It is assumed that there is sufficient overlap between the two disciplines to overcome any integration issues, however, the gaps are generally obscured rather than addressed by the overlap.

This aggregation in disciplines leaves gaps in terms of making coherent decisions; each discipline is immersed within its own lexicon and axioms and is either subsumed or obviated entirely by the dominant discipline. These gaps become particularly poignant in wicked problems and are the focus of this paper, within these gaps lie uncertainty, and with it emergent and dynamic properties that over time constantly change the nature for how the problem is framed. Mainstream decision process follows a substantive approach that relies on ergodic and monotone conditions for the most effective decision choices. The central theme for this chapter is derived from the premise that a substantive decision approach is less than effective in dynamic situations where emergence and randomness are prevalent and a process approach would prove more utility.

The general thesis for this chapter:

Execution of a decision process in a complex situation that sustains a continuous selection of plausible possibilities will avoid the need for probabilistic states as a catalyst for the decision maker

This chapter intends to show how complex situations are antithetical to a substantive decision process and offers an alternative process approach towards wicked problems. This paper explores the nature of the multidisciplinary problem set and the challenges it poses on current decision processes and discusses the implications of decision making for addressing wicked problems. Finally the paper introduces the concept of an interpretive process for dealing with complex situations, Reverse Decision Making (RDM), for making decisions in complex situations. The intent of this chapter is to support a decision process that obviates the inherent complexity found in emergent dynamic environments for which multi-disciplines are created to address.