Daily Knowledge Valuation in Organizations

3Traceability and Structuring of Decision-making

3.1. Decision-making

Decision-making is defined as a choice done by one or several actors, when exploring several alternatives. Aristotle [ARI 72] defines a decision as thinking resulting from an individual or collaborative deliberation. In psychology, decision-making is considered as thinking in which an actor facing a problem or achieving a goal uses expectations related to future events, similar real-life decision consequences, preferences, believes, etc. [RET 01]. In sociology, decision-making is modeled as games or action theories.

But the main theory that marks the current organization’s management is the limited rationality defined by Simon [SIM 77]. Simon proposes to study decision-making as a rational process that can be modeled as a cognitive process with different satisfaction criteria. Related to this theory, several activities, which are at the beginning considered as chaotic and appealing to creativity, such as design, are modeled in a process combining a workflow with environments constraints and actors goals.

Table 3.1. Decision-level characteristics

Characteristics	Strategic	Tactical	Operational
Field of decision	Relationship with the environment	Resource management	Resource use in the process of transformation
Timescale	Long term	Medium term	Short term
Effect of decision	Durable	Short	Very short
Reversibility of the decision	Null	Low	Height
Decision procedure	Non-programmable	Semi-programmable ...