THE DECISION PROCESS: A PERSPECTIVE†

Abstract A decision process consists of all the subprocesses pertaining to the selection of a course of action, or a plan, and to its execution. Most of these subprocesses except some well formalized ones like decision analysis are covert processes taking place exclusively in someone's mind, and are hitherto paid relatively little attention. In order to have a better understanding of the organization of the whole process, and thus to upgrade it, these neglected aspects should be brought to attention. With that principle in mind, the topics like the following are discussed in this paper: hierarchical structure of multiple decision processes, learning mechanism to dispense with deliberate analytical information processing for minor decisions, cognitive simulators to generate decision trees, goal-setting and decision scope.