A NETWORK MODEL FOR ORGANIZATIONAL DECISION-MAKING

To understand how decisions are made by groups and organizations, one needs to adopt a particular viewpoint as well an assumption about how the individuals in the collective behave. The viewpoint one adopts and the assumptions one makes directly affect one's ability to describe, explain, and possibly improve strategic decisions. Usually, rational and holistic assumptions are made. Applying the artificial intelligence concept of connectionism, this paper proposes a new network model to consider an organizational decision made through interactions among interrelated rational agents. The model is applied to explain an example-the Iran-Contra affair-and is then compared with other models.