IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/spr/sprchp/978-3-642-02851-9_4.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

Generating and preselecting alternatives

In: Rational Decision Making

Author

Listed:
  • Franz Eisenführ
  • Martin Weber

    (University of Mannheim)

  • Thomas Langer

    (University of Münster)

Abstract

Summary The application of cause-effect analysis naturally leads to alternatives. Formal impact models and means-ends networks may generate a multitude of useful alternatives. Visualizing an ideal alternative may stimulate creativity on how to approach such an alternative. Expanding the decision context by taking into account more fundamental objectives may yield innovative, previously unrecognized options. In many cases, the construction of a good solution can be broken down into various modular partial solutions that may simplify the decision problem. By developing multi-level alternatives that include a number of possible reactions to future events, one can obtain more - and often better alternatives than by generating only single-level alternatives. Creativity techniques like brainstorming and the Nominal Group Technique can enhance or support the development of alternatives in groups. Identifying and eliminating bad alternatives is important if the number of options becomes very large. This may mean that the decision maker has to preselect alternatives without having completely evaluated them beforehand. Restrictions and aspiration levels are popular but problematic methods. Under certain conditions, it is possible to preselect alternatives according to the dominance criterion.

Suggested Citation

  • Franz Eisenführ & Martin Weber & Thomas Langer, 2010. "Generating and preselecting alternatives," Springer Books, in: Rational Decision Making, chapter 0, pages 81-105, Springer.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-642-02851-9_4
    DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-02851-9_4
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-642-02851-9_4. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.