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As part of the 50th anniversary of Management Science, the journal is publishing articles that reflect on the past, present, and future of the various subfields the journal represents. In this article, we consider decision analysis research as it has appeared in Management Science. After reviewing the foundations of decision analysis and the history of the journal's decision analysis department, we review a number of key developments in decision analysis research that have appeared in Management Science and offer some comments on the current state of the field.
Key words: decision analysis; probability assessment; utility theory; game theory
1. Introduction
Management Science (MS) has played a distinguished and distinctive role in the development of decision analysis. As part of Management Science, the decision analysis department has focused on papers that consider the use of scientific methods to improve the understanding or practice of managerial decision making. The current departmental statement reads as follows:
The decision analysis department publishes articles that create, extend, or unify scientific knowledge pertaining to decision analysis and decision making. We seek papers that describe concepts and techniques for modeling decisions as well as behaviorally oriented papers that explain or evaluate decisions or judgments. Papers may develop new theory or methodology, address problems of implementation, present empirical studies of choice behavior or decision modeling, synthesize existing ideas, or describe innovative applications. In all cases, the papers must be based on sound decision-theoretic and/or psychological principles. . . .
Decision settings may consist of any combination of certainty or uncertainty; competitive or noncompetitive situations; individuals, groups, or markets; and applications may include managerial decisions in business or government.
According to Hopp's counts (Hopp 2004MS),1 Management Science has published 590 decision analysis papers in the period from 1954 to 2003, accounting for 12% of the papers in Management Science and 17% of the "most-cited" papers (those receiving 50 or more cites). However, given the interdisciplinary nature of the field, it is difficult to draw sharp boundaries and determine precisely what counts as "decision analysis."
Following Bell et al. (1988), we can distinguish among three different perspectives in the study of decision making. In the normative perspective, the focus is on rational choice and normative models are built on basic assumptions (or axioms) that...