Papers
Siebert, Johannes; Keeney, Ralph L. “Creating More and Better Alternatives for Decisions Using Objectives”. Operations Research, September/October 2015, 63(5), 1144-1158, 1
Siebert, Johannes. “Can Novices Create Alternatives of the Same Quality as Experts?”, Decision Analysis (INFORMS) 2016, 13(4), 278-291
Many individuals and organizations spend most of their effort evaluating alternatives without ensuring that the best possible alternative is to be chosen. Therefore, we analyzed how individuals and organizations can systematically create more and better alternatives to improve the outcome of their decision-making. The main idea is to use objectives as a stimulus in alternative creation (Keeney 1992). In cooperation with Ralph Keeney (Duke University, USA), I conducted five experiments. The participants created alternatives for essential decisions they were highly involved with. In summary, these experiments provided extensive evidence that using objectives for creating alternatives impacts the number and quality of alternatives created significantly. The results were used to derive a guideline for creating alternatives in critical decision situations.
