The practice of decision‐making—some evidence

Abstract The theory of scientific decision‐making is a well developed and coherent discipline, which may be expected to have had some impact on the decision‐making processes employed by actual firms. This paper reports the results of a survey of engineering firms in South Wales, and casts some doubt on the hypothesis that advances in decision analysis have had a descernible impact on the practice of business. Moreover, the primary reason for this lack of impact appears to be that decision analysis is not perceived as relevant to the decision‐making needs of managers. The paper concludes with some suggestion for overcoming this obstacle to the application of decision analysis.