Become a more effective decision-maker, communicator, and manager by using the valuable techniques described in this unique book. It's designed to help you break away from the constraints of the technologist's analytical/scientific viewpoint and augment it organizational and personal perspectives that strengthen your decision-making ability and leadership skills. Decision-Making for Technology Executives shows you how to utilize this multiple perspective approach to problem-solving and systems development in real-world, outside the laboratory, situations. You learn how this three-dimensional approach has been applied successfully to a wide spectrum of complex systems tasks: from system forecasting to technology assessment, from industrial catastrophes to facility siting decisions, from corporate strategy to acquisition. Through valuable case studies, such as the Exxon Valdez and Bhopal accidents, you learn lessons on improving technology and risk assessment, forecasting, and crisis management. And through ready-to-implement, practical guidelines you see how to become a more effective decision-maker and manager, while improving communication between technologists and others involved in the decision process. A one-of-its-kind look at the multiple perspective concept, this guide helps: Increase your understanding of complex sociotechnical systems; Boost your effectiveness as an executive; Improve technological risk management, forecasting, and planning; Provide more balanced input to your decision-making tasks. After introducing the concept of multiple perspectives, the book shows how organizational and personal perspectives give you unique insights not attainable with simply a technical perspective. All the while the author, a renowned expert in the field, interjects examples from the public and private sector to clearly illustrate the concept. You get an insightful look at technological risk management, forecasting, and planning viewed in the multiple perspective context; a probing examination of the possibilities arising from recent developments in complexity science; and guidelines you can put to use in your own unique situation. Practicing engineers, systems analysts, and professionals involved in corporate strategic planning, technology assessment, and risk management will find this volume a valuable addition to their everyday decision making tasks.
Foreword to Original Edition (Mitroff).Preface to Revised Edition. Biographical Data. Figures. Tables. Permissions.Introduction. The Usual Perspective and Its Limitations: The Problem-Solution View; Optimization or the Best Solution Search; Reductionism; Reliance on Data and Models; Quantification; Objectivity; Ignoring or Avoiding the Individual; Perceptions of Time. Our Proposed Perspectives:Introduction; The T Perspective; The O Perspective; The P perspective; T+O+P: Characteristics and Comparisons; Integration of Perspectives; Linkages and Interactions of Perspectives; Other Perspectives. Illustrations from the Public Sector: Military Technology; Local Crisis: The Mount St. Helens Eruption; Denver International Airport; Other Cultural Contexts. Illustrations from the Private Sector: Willamette Falls Hydroelectric Project; Electronic System Market: Failure of a Strategy; Commercial Aircraft: The Wide-Body Trijets; Trading: The Stock Market. Technology: Risk and Assessment: Perspectives on Risk; The Alaska Oil Spill; The Bhopal Chemical Accident; On the Nuclear Accidents; Implications and Prospects. Technology: Forecasting and Planning: The Discounting Dilemma; Forecasting; Planning. Looking Ahead: Complexity Science, Chaos, and Multiple Perspectives: Characteristics of Complex Systems; Limits on Forecasting; Modeling; Perspectives on Business Organization; Areas for Research. Guidelines for the User: Seven Guidelines; Sample Work Plan; Decision Structure (MAMP) Appendix: Interaction Mapping: Digraphs; Multiattribute/Multiparty decision Structure (MAMP); Assumptional Analysis; Delphi; Additional Guidelines for O and P Development.
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Harold A. Linstone
Harold A. Linstone is University Professor Emeritus of Systems Science at Portland State University and editor-in-chief of the professional journal Technological Forecasting and Social Change. Author and co-author of several other books in the field, he has 20 years of industrial experience at Hughes Aircraft Company and Lockheed Aircraft Corporation. Dr. Linstone has also served as visiting Scientist at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria and Visiting Professor at the Universities of Rome, Washington, and Kiel. He received his doctorate in mathematics from the University of Southern California.