Decision Concepts for Organisations

When, in the beginning of the fifties Simon (1952/53), for the first time, systematically tried to analyse decisions in organisations with a view to concluding from this the necessary quantitative solution instruments, it had rashly been expected that the formal foundations of an organisation theory with respect to business administration would be created very soon. In view of the developments which have taken place in the meantime in the fields of game and bargaining theory, and considering the knowledge obtained from the theory of multiple criteria decision making, it seems reasonable today to make another attempt to find out how far quantitative economic concepts of this kind can be used for or contribute to the formulating and solving of decision problems in organisations. Thus, cooperative games with or without side payments as well as non-cooperative games come into consideration. As to the application of the theory of bargaining to decision problems in organisations, two qualitatively different procedures have been developed, namely the approaches based on the game theory and the concessive models of bargaining formulated on the basis of spontaneous elements of behaviour.