P. Naude et al., A CASE-STUDY OF STRATEGIC ENGINEERING DECISION-MAKING USING JUDGMENTAL MODELING AND PSYCHOLOGICAL PROFILING, IEEE transactions on engineering management, 44(3), 1997, pp. 237-247
This paper focuses on the role that judgmental modeling played in help
ing a large international engineering company plan its future producti
on environment and also on how psychological profiling can help us to
understand how different individuals within the decision-making team c
ontribute to the overall decision. In this case study, two strategic d
ecisions had to be made: which production process to use and which pro
jects to allocate to the identified process. The decisions were compli
cated by the fact that different members of the management team were r
esponsible for different elements of the decision. There was extensive
interchange and negotiation between these various parties throughout
the decision-making process, and for both decisions the use of judgmen
tal modeling was found to have advantages in terms of structuring the
decision process and in rank-ordering the potential outcomes. A compar
ison is made of the rank orders of the different potential outcomes be
fore and after the use of judgmental modeling, and the psychological p
rofiles of the individuals are used to provide further insights into h
ow decision makers change their points of view over the life of the de
cision.