If, as Vaughan (1997:93) comments, "in conditions of uncertainty, people revert to habits and routine" is rational strategic decision-making possible?.
This essays deals with issues on rational strategic decision making, and how the decision making process can be hindered when the decision maker is faced with conditions of uncertainty.
The term rational strategic management can, and has been interpreted in several different ways, however for the purpose of this essay the term will be used in the way described by Harrison (1954) "all that is necessary to make a given choice a rational one is the existence of an objective and selection of some alternative that, in the decision maker's view, promises to meet the objective". Meaning that a rational decision is simply one where the decision maker has chosen the most suitable of strategies for attaining any given goal. .
Much research has been carried out on the decision making process and how decision makers arrive at a solution. One of the earliest was carried out by Mintzberg, Raisinghi and Theoret (1976) who attempted to model the processes of strategic decision making and identified three phases the decision maker goes through before arriving at a conclusion. These are the (1) Identification Phase, (2) Development Phase and (3) The selection phase. Each of these can be broken down into further sub-routines (See fig 1). However there are a number of important assumptions in the rational decision making model. It assumes the problem is clear and unambiguous, the decision maker can identify all options and their viable alternatives, it assumes that the criteria and alternatives can be ranked and weighted and that the problem remains consistent throughout the process (the model formulated by Mintzberg et al, did attempt to include "recycles", by which the decision maker returned to earlier phases, but not for this specific purpose), full information is available and there are no time or cost constraints and finally that the choice alternative will yield the highest perceived value.