Decision making for technology executives : using multiple perspectives to improved performance / Harold A. Linstone.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

The Usual Perspective and Its Limitations -- The Problem-Solution View -- Optimization or the "Best" Solution Search -- Reductionism -- Reliance on Data and Models -- Quantification -- Objectivity -- Ignoring or Avoiding the Individual -- Perceptions of Time -- Our Proposed Perspectives -- The Technical Perspective -- The Organizational Perspective -- The Personal Perspective -- T + O + P: Characteristics and Comparisons -- Integration of Perspectives -- Linkages and the Interactions of Perspectives -- Other Perspectives -- Illustrations from the Public Sector -- Military Technology -- Local Crisis: The Mount St. Helens Eruption (Clary) -- Denver International Airport (Szyliowicz and Goetz) -- Other Cultural Contexts -- Illustrations from the Private Sector -- The Willamette Falls Hydroelectric Project (Hawke) -- Electronic System Market: Failure of a Strategy (Cook) -- Commercial Aircraft: The Wide-Body Trijets -- Trading: The Stock Market -- Technology: Risk and Assessment -- Perspectives on Risk -- The Alaska Oil Spill -- The Bhopal Chemical Accident (Bowonder and Linstone) -- On the Nuclear Accidents -- Implications and Prospects -- Technology: Forecasting and Planning -- The Discounting Dilemma -- Forecasting -- Planning -- Looking Ahead: Complexity Science, Chaos, and Multiple Perspectives -- Complex Adaptive Systems -- Limits on Forecasting -- Modeling -- Perspectives on Business Organizations -- Areas of Research -- Guidelines for the User -- Seven Guidelines (Linstone and Meltsner) -- Sample Work Plan

This text is designed to help readers break away from the constraints of the technologist's "analytical/scientific" viewpoint and employ broader organizational and personal perspectives that strengthen their decision-making ability and leadership skills. The text shows the reader how to utilize this multiple perspective approach to problem-solving and systems development in real-world, outside the laboratory, situtations. Readers learn how this three-dimensional approach has been applied successfully to a wide spectrum of complex systems tasks, from system forecasting to technology assessment, from industrial catastrophes to facility sitting decisions, from corporate strategy to acquisition. Through case studies, the book explores improving technology and risk assessment, forecasting, and crisis management. It also looks at complex sociotechnical systems, technological risk management and planning