Title: Managing an Incremental Commitment: An Analytic Challenge
Authors: Rex Brown, George Mason University
Date: 2000
Status: working paper

Decision making often consists of incremental moves toward some selected objective, which can be reconsidered as knowledge emerges—as when an individual chooses a career, or a commander picks a military course of action.  Analyzing these decision strategy options as if they were single integral commitments can distort comparison.  However, rigorous normative treatment of complex act-event sequences is often impractical.

 Alternative analytic aids to managing incremental commitment usefully are explored, e.g.

• Evaluation of integral options adjusted for flexibility
• Successive decision analyses of incremental options
• Simplified information gathering decision trees
• Feedback to decider on evolving operation success
• Rehearsing deciders on potential recognition-primed sequences

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