Additive Strategies In Decision Making

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APPROACHES TO DECISION MAKING AND PROBLEM SOLVING Marnishia Bee Concorde Career College What is Decision Making? Decision making is the process of considering alternatives and choosing among them. Some Psychologists and Scientists who study Decision making states that humans make decisions by thoroughly examine all alternatives and then choose the one that will be most beneficial to them. In 1956 Herbert Simon introduced the notion of bounded rationality. Bounded rationality means that boundaries, or limitations, around the decision making process prevent it from being logical. More often we base our decisions on strategies and educated guesses (Wood, Wood, Boyd 2013). Additive strategy is a decision making method in which each alternative is evaluated on each of the important elements affecting the decision and the alternative with the highest overall rating is chosen. The Additive strategy assumes that the high ratings on one factor compensate for low ratings on another. This strategy is useful but it does not support the fact that some factors are more important than the others. Elimination by aspects is a decision making method in which changes are evaluated against criteria that have been ranked according to importance. This …show more content…

The second heuristic that is used for problem solving is working backward in many cases called backward search. It is a strategy in which a person creates the steps they need to solve a problem describing a preferred goal and working backward to the existing condition. The third heuristic is means-end analysis this in strategy the present position is compared with the chosen goal and a sequence of steps are expressed and taken to close the space between them. Many large problems must be broken down into lesser steps before a solution can be reached (Wood, Wood, Boyd

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