Decision-Making Models

There is no one model of decision making. Rather, there are many theories of decision making, each of which tends to be associated with a particular area of scholarly inquiry and has different assumptions about human nature, the manner in which decisions are made, and the quality of the decisions made.

This entry organizes the many theories and approaches to decision making into four broad approaches that inform, or are found in, business and society literatures, other than ethical decision making since that theory has its own entry. First, rational decision making is an orderly, cognitive process where individuals form probability estimates of outcomes to select between different courses of action. Second, political decision making emphasizes power and dependence; the balance of power among people influences ...