ADVERSARIAL DECISION-MAKING - BENEFITS OR LOSSES

A substantial body of work has been performed developing models for de cision making under adversarial conditions. To date however, little at tention has been paid to the underlying motivation of the decision mak ers or how the decision process actually functions in the corporate en vironment when adversarial relationships exist between departments. In this paper adversarial decisions are analyzed using Allison's concept ual framework, strategic assumption surfacing and testing (SAST), and agency theory. The performance of the SAST method is found to be linke d to the descriptive model that best represents the decision making pr ocess and whether the analyst subscribes to agency theory as a valid m otivator for individual decisions within the organization.