Improved Decision and Policy-Making Processes: On The Horizon?
指出美国商业竞争力下降、环境灾难等复杂社会问题常使决策者受挫，认为核心挑战不在于解决某个具体问题，而在于改进决策和政策制定过程，并探讨了未来可能的知识来源。
Issues such as declining American business competitiveness, environmental disasters, drug abuse, and conditions af-fecting the poor and homeless seem to compete for national attention and warrant our concern. These challenges are com-plex ones that often frustrate private and public-sector policy makers. Blame or attribution of responsibility for policy-failures is usually associated with or placed upon individuals, groups, organizations, or institutions. President Bush, the Demo-cratic Congress, and local city administra-tions have been frequently cast in the roles of fools or villains by social critics. Cor-porate managers, too, in their highly visible roles to organizational Stakeholder, tend to get more credit for positive organiza-tional outcomes and more blame for nega-tive outcomes than would seem to be their due. A more valuable question to pursue, though, than credit or blame, for private or public sector management is whether cur-rently employed decision and policy-mak-ing processes can take into account the varying and complex moral contingencies often present in these challenges. The pur-pose of this article is to deny that our great-est challenge for public or private sector initiative is the resolution of any one im-portant issue such as the drug problem, global environmental threat or economic concerns of inflation or unemployment. What is common to these and all social and business controversies are decision and policy-making processes that need to be more carefully considered and im-proved. Management theorists and practi-tioners, must discover more powerful, and yet sensitive, decision and policy-making processes that can more effectively address our most troubling social and economic threats. Although such improved decision and policy making processes may not be on the immediate horizon, we may be able now to suggest some additional sources of knowledge upon which these processes will depend.