Naturalistic Decision Making

Decision-making is a cognitive process stemming from the analysis of available courses of action related to a given problem. Rationally, potential courses of action are derived from deliberate analysis of available data related to a problem and its potential outcomes. Decisions are generally characterized as normative, descriptive or naturalistic. Normative decisions are based on evidence, logic and analysis; descriptive decisions are based on intuition and experience. Naturalistic decisions are formed as a hybrid of normative and descriptive processes.

For decision-makers the revolution in information technology and the amount and scope of the data they provide has become overwhelming, leading to cognitive overload, confusion and an inability to function effectively. Decision Support Systems (DSS) facilitate data analysis and selection of a viable course of action rapidly and effectively. However, like the human decision- makers they serve, DSS capabilities may also suffer from cognitive overload, inaccuracy, and complexity, especially in time-sensitive environments.

This study explores DSS employment for time-sensitive decision processes using Digitally Aided Close Air Support (DACAS) as a model. The study explores decision theory, models, DSS development and time-sensitive environments. Using DACAS as a model the paper reveals the obstacles and opportunities associated with the employment of DSS for time- sensitive processes. Finally, the study makes recommendations for improved employment of DSS in time-sensitive environments.

High Reliability Organisation (HRO) and Resilience Engineering (RE) are two research traditions which have attracted a wide and diverse readership in the past decade. Both have reached the status of central contributions to the field of safety while sharing a similar orientation. This is not without creating tensions or questions, as expressed in the call of this special issue. The contention of this article is that these two schools introduce ways of approaching safety which need to be reflected upon in order to avoid simplifications and hasty judgments about their relative strength, weaknesses or degree of overlapping. HRO has gained strength and legitimacy from (1) studying ethnographically, with an organisational angle, high-risk systems, (2) debating about principles producing organisation reliability in face of high complexity and (3) conceptualising some of these principles into a successful generic model of " collective mindfulness " , with both practical and theoretical success. RE has gained strength and legitimacy from (1) harnessing then deconstructing, empirically and theoretically, the notion of 'human error', (2) argued for a system (and complexity) view and discourse about safety/accidents, (3) and supported this view with the help of (graphical) actionable models and methods (i.e. the engineering orientation). In order to show this, one has to go beyond the past 10 years of RE to include a longer time frame going back to the 80s to the early days of Cognitive Engineering (CE). The approach that is followed here includes therefore a strong historical orientation as a way to better understand the present situation, profile each school, promote complementarities while maintaining nuances.

Over the past two decades, the 'new view' has become a popular term in safety theory and practice. It has however also been criticised, provoking division and controversy. The aim of this article is to clarify the current situation. It describes the origins, ambiguities and successes of the 'new view' as well as the critiques formulated. The article begins by outlining the origins of this concept, in the 1980s and 1990s, from the cognitive (system) engineering (CSE) school initiated by Rasmussen, Hollnagel and Woods. This differed from Reason's approach to human error in this period. The article explains how Dekker, in the early 2000s, translates ideas from the CSE school to coin the term 'new view', while also developing, shortly after, an argument against Reason's legacy that was more radical and critical than his predecessors'. Secondly, the article describes the ambiguities associated with the term 'new view' because of the different programs that have derived from CSE (Resilience Engineering-RE then Safety II, Safety Differently, Theory of Graceful Extensibility). The text then identifies three programs by different thinkers (methodological, formal and critical) and Dekker's three eclectic versions of the 'new view'. Thirdly, the article discusses the success of the CSE and RE school, showing how it has strongly resonated with many practitioners outside the academic world. Fourthly, the objections raised within the field of human factors and system safety but also from different traditions (e.g., system safety engineering with Leveson, sociology of safety with Hopkins) are introduced, and discussed.

Il y a 10 ans, nous proposions une réflexion sur le rôle de l'intuition dans les processus de prise de décision, en nous fondant principalement sur les travaux de W. Agor (1989). Dans ce cadre, nous débutions cette réflexion en proposant plusieurs définitions du concept d'intuition. Puis, nous évoquions son rôle sur la prise de décisions et enfin, nous complétions

Argument ten stara się uwidocznić konsekwencje, jakie zachodzą przy równoczesnym utrzymywaniu prawdziwości założeń naturalizmu oraz ewolucjonizmu. Plantinga, przypatrując się założeniom obu tych teorii, dochodzi do wniosku, że w ich świetle nie mamy podstaw, aby uważać, że nasze mechanizmy poznawcze generują w większości prawdziwe przekonania.

Interoperability: maintaining clear superordinate goals, reducing task complexity, and optimizing team size to ensure inter-agency action implementation in critical incident decisions. http://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/3914/ Article LJMU has developed LJMU Research Online for users to access the research output of the University more effectively.

Adaptive control in the face of uncertainty involves making online predictions about events in order to plan actions to reliably achieve desirable outcomes. However, we often face situations in which the effects of our actions are probabilistic (e.g., returns on our investments), and the environment itself is dynamic, - it can change irrespective of any action we decide to take, and in a relatively stable or unstable way (e.g., economic climate). Therefore, the problem of control concerns learning to isolate the effects that are generated directly by our actions, from those that occur independently of them. We face this problem in a host of uncertain dynamic environments: ecological (using fertilizers to increase crop yield), economic (investing in real estate), industrial (operating nuclear power plants), mechanical (driving cars) and medical (stemming outbreaks of disease). Thus far there has been little attempt at a synthesis of the amassing research directed towards understanding control in the face of uncertainty. The aim of this book is to bring together theoretical and empirical research from disparate disciplines spanning Social, Cognitive and Clinical Psychology, Human Factors and Neuroscience to Engineering and Machine learning. It serves as a round up of the different techniques used to examine issues concerning control (prediction, agency, causality, uncertainty) and unifies a substantial amount of disparate research. The general framework (Monitoring and control- MC framework) used to achieve this proposes two central ideas (agency, uncertainty) that have important ramifications across disciplines. In sum, control processes involve self-regulatory mechanisms that enable us to make subjective estimates of success, which helps to anchor our interpretation of uncertain events. In addition, these estimates are integrated with estimations of rates of change of the events in the environment which helps us track the outcomes we aim to control.

This document reports in brief the findings of a study conducted to observe the relationship between a sense of presence and team training in decision making in dynamic high risk environments. A simple desktop virtual game environment is used to explore the possibility that, in this context, such semi immersive dynamic virtual environment (VE) could be used to achieve a sense of presence sufficient to provide trainees with an experience of the same cognitive value as one in the real world, without the need to construct a full immersive VE with all its associated costs.

The aim of this paper is to examine the cognitive processes through which operators make decisions when dealing with microincidents during their actual work, and to determine whether they use a naturalistic or normative decision making strategy. That is, do they try to recognize a microincident as familiar and base decisions on pattern recognition, tacit knowledge, or condition-action rules (naturalistic), or do they need to concurrently compare and contrast options, before selecting the best possible according standard operating procedures (normative)? The method employed for data collection was a cognitive task analysis (CTA) based on operators' activities. The main finding of this research was that decision making is primarily based on naturalistic strategies. These findings contrast the normative behavior prescribed by the organization's work design and their standards of competency for training and evaluation operators work. Relevance to industry: This study presents a situated method to describe how sharp end operators make decisions during microincidents that occurs in normal operation, emphasizing how the sociotechnical environment affects their cognitive strategies, which is one of the basic steps for an organization that wants to enhance the safety culture. r

Intelligence analysis is a decision-making process rife with ambiguous, conflicting, irrelevant, important, and excessive information. The U.S. Intelligence Community is primed for psychology to lend its voice to the "analytic transformation" movement aimed at improving the quality of intelligence analysis. Traditional judgment and decision making research serves as a starting point, though recent developments in decision science advance additional relevant perspectives that are critical to improving intelligence analysis. Naturalistic decision making offers insights into the challenging information world of intelligence analysis and expert judgment. Research on group decision making shows that group processes are often dependent on the distribution of information within the group, while information foraging theory suggests that intelligence analysts may be viewed as "informavores" who use adaptive strategies to form key judgments efficiently. Psychologists should capitalize on these advances in research and theory to engage the intelligence community on its own grounds and take the lead on intelligence analytic reform. A potential research agenda and recommendations to optimize intelligence community effectiveness are offered.

Il y a 10 ans , nous proposions une réflexion sur le rôle de l'intuition dans les processus de prise de décision, en nous fondant principalement sur les travaux de W. Agor (1989). Dans ce cadre, nous débutions cette réflexion en proposant plusieurs définitions du concept d'intuition. Puis, nous évoquions son rôle sur la prise de décisions et enfin, nous complétions l'analyse par une vaste étude empirique conduite auprès de chefs d'entreprises. Notre recherche s'appuyait sur une vision du processus de prise de décision fortement inspirée par les travaux de H.A. Simon. Or, une nouvelle approche décisionnelle intégrant l'intuition est apparue depuis quelques années. Elle permet de mieux comprendre et donc de démystifier ce concept d'intuition. Nous présenterons dans un premier temps cette approche décisionnelle, puis dans un second temps nous décrirons les mécanismes contribuant à faire émerger l'intuition. Enfin, nous proposerons quelques conseils comportementaux visant à aider les décideurs dans leur utilisation de l'intuition.

makers (e.g., managers and military officers) conceptu-This paper is concerned with three questions: How alize the uncertainty which they encounter in their do decision makers conceptualize uncertainty? How work? (2) How do decision makers cope with their uncerdo decision makers cope with uncertainty? Are there tainty? (3) Are there systematic relationships between systematic relationships between different conceptudifferent conceptualizations of uncertainty and differalizations of uncertainty and different methods of copent methods of coping? These questions are motivated ing? To answer these questions we analyzed 102 selfby indications that decision makers and students of reports of decision-making under uncertainty with an decision-making conceptualize uncertainty in different inclusive method of classifying conceptualizations of ways, thus reducing the propensity (or ability) of the uncertainty and coping mechanisms developed from the decision-making literature. The results showed former to use models and methods developed by the that decision makers distinguished among three types latter (Despite the centrality of uncertainty in the decisioning was primarily managed by reduction, incomplete making literature, only few studies (referenced above) information was primarily managed by assumptionbased reasoning, and conflict among alternatives was addressed (indirectly) this question. These studies primarily managed by weighing pros and cons. Based showed that people conceptualize uncertainty differon these results and findings from previous studies of ently from the conceptualization of risk in Decision Thenaturalistic decision-making we hypothesized a ory. The literature, however, offers numerous conceptu-R.A.W.F.S. (Reduction, Assumption-based reasoning, alizations of uncertainty: Argote (1982, p. 420) notes Weighing pros and cons, Suppression, and Hedging) that "there are almost as many definitions of uncerheuristic, which describes the strategies that decision tainty as there are treatments of the subject"; Yates makers apply to different types of uncertainty in natuand Stone (1992, p. 1) suggest that "if we were to read ralistic settings. ᭧ 1997 Academic Press

Notre étude s'est attachée à la description de l'activité décisionnelle de joueurs de football en situation de contre-attaque. Cette activité décisionnelle a été appréhendée à l'aide du cadre théorique de la NDM en situation aménagée à des fins d'étude. Des données comportementales ont été enregistrées auprès de douze joueurs de football, puis complétées par des données verbales recueillies lors d'un entretien d'autoconfrontation. Les données ont été analysées en 6 étapes : (a) la retranscription des données, (b) la sélection et l'identification des unités significatives, (c) le découpage du déroulement de l'activité en situations vécues, (d) l'identification des situations et des schémas, (e) la modélisation de la dynamique de l'activité décisionnelle, et (f) la validité de l'analyse. Les résultats ont permis d'identifier 16 schémas caractéristiques de l'activité décisionnelle des joueurs de football en situation de contraintes temporelles. Ces schémas constituent des structures d'arrière-plans articulant des composantes perceptives et cognitives, et qui facilitent la reconnaissance rapide de situations pendant la contre-attaque. La discussion de ces résultats pointe l'aspect dynamique de l'activité décisionnelle. L'application de ces résultats à un modèle de joueur de football virtuel est ensuite présentée et des perspectives d'évolution sont proposées.

This chapter is about managing sociotechnological risks. It is in the 70s that the notion of ‘high-risk’ (or ‘safety critical’) systems started to be distinguished and grouped into an independent category including industries such as the nuclear, aviation, marine, petrochemical or the railways. Any attempt such as this one to introduce this background in a few pages is necessarily restrictive, partly unfair but also a simplified account. And, there are of course many different strategies to do so. One option is to consider the field through the scientific disciplines involved, say sociology, engineering, psychology, ergonomics, management, etc. A second one, quite related to the first, is to introduce pioneers who, from different disciplinary backgrounds, produced seminal contributions used as shared references among various research communities interested in the safety of complex sociotechnological systems. A third one is to look into industry (aviation, nuclear or petrochemical) in order to illustrate and to differentiate the diversity of problems related to sociotechnological risks and how they materialise. Another option is to identify core concepts that sometimes cut across a range of disciplines, authors and industry which offers also good insights into the issues involved with sociotechnological risks. In any case, it is a very challenging task. The intention in this chapter is to combine a bit of these strategies in order to offer the reader a broad vision, and to follow editors’ guidelines specifying the following structure: first, key concepts, second, major debates and third open questions/perspectives.

The frame of reference for this comparative analysis involves looking at the similarities and differences between the naturalistic decision-making framework (NDM), and several other decision-making frameworks, including adaptive decision -making, fast-and-frugal heuristics, dynamic decision making, judgment and decision making, organisational decision making, intuition, and expertise, to compare each framework in turn against the NDM framework. The comparison takes part within a context to compare the frameworks under an umbrella of terms, to understand how each framework might extend or be used alongside the NDM framework with respect to the umbrella of terms.

The limitations of the classical or traditional paradigm of decision research are increasingly apparent, even though there has been a substantial body of empirical research on medical decision-making over the past 40 years. As decision-support technology continues to proliferate in medical settings, it is imperative that ''basic science'' decision research develop a broader-based and more valid foundation for the study of medical decision-making as it occurs in the natural setting. This paper critically reviews both traditional and recent approaches to medical decision making, considering the integration of problem-solving and decision-making research paradigms, the role of conceptual knowledge in decision-making, and the emerging paradigm of naturalistic decisionmaking. We also provide an examination of technology-mediated decision-making. Expanding the scope of decision research will better enable us to understand optimal decision processes, suitable coping mechanisms under suboptimal conditions, the development of expertise in decision-making, and ways in which decision-support technology can successfully mediate decision processes. Ó

As a field naturalist, my doctoral research in plant ecology has focused on the biodiversity of open Mediterranean environments, conducted in parallel with a professional activity in a design office. This knowledge of botany, extended to the entire western Mediterranean, has subsequently allowed me to write chapters of books (monographs, identification keys, synonymic indexes, catalogs) on the flora of France and North Africa, then of the Middle East.
In collaboration with various European teams and Maghreb researchers, I started work on new lines of research (integrative systematics, biogeography and phylogeny). I diversified biological models (molluscs) and assimilated new methods (biochemistry, molecular genetics). Various endemic species have served as integrative models that we are studying at all levels, from in situ inventory and conservation, to the phylogenetic and paleo-ecological origins of endemism, works done in the context of several Ph.D. I participated and/or co-directed.
Within the research unit AMAP, I collaborated with Tela Botanica on the Pl@ntNet project (https://plantnet.org/) which continues through the Floris'Tic project (http://floristic.org/), with activities dedicated to the flora of North Africa and the Middle East. I refocused my research on descriptive botany and biodiversity cataloguing, through collaborative networking and the use of computerised information storage and taxonomic identification tools on the Mediterranean flora. I now focus on describing the unknown biodiversity in the Mediterranean hotspot, combining classical (morphological) and modern (molecular) approaches.
My research project is to continue the momentum that I initiated over the last dozen years. This project deals with biogeography, taxonomy and conservation in the service of knowledge, protection and promotion of biodiversity in the Mediterranean, particularly in the countries of the southern and eastern shores. It aims in the medium and long term to participate in the filling of the taxonomic deficit in areas of biodiversity hotspots but coldspots of knowledge, such as the Maghreb and the Mediterranean Middle East. The objective is the reappropriation, by the Maghrebian and Middle Eastern scientific corps, of a long and rich history of the biodiversity knowledge, partially interrupted for half a century, and whose historical collections of Montpellier (MPU), Paris (P), Geneva (G) or Barcelona (B) herbaria are its precious memory. The project draws its regional coherence through a natural biogeographic convergence and integrates all the disciplines from the biodiversity inventory to the decision support tools.
The project is structured around three objectives: 1) Improvement and capitalization of fundamental knowledge on Mediterranean botany in the Maghreb and the Middle East; 2) Training and assistance, in southern countries, of field teams, mixing professionals and amateurs; 3) Production of practical identification tools, classical or modern, adapted to the needs of botanists and ecologists.

The mainstream research into project management has been criticized in the recent years for its heavy reliance on the functionalist view of projects characterized by linearity of the life cycle. Considering that instrumental approaches for project management are not sufficient for a flexible and uncertain product as software, the project success depends on how software project managers deal with the problems and make decisions. Different from the normative decision theory, which focus on how decisions should be made in order to be rational, the descriptive decision theory focus on how decisions are actually made and includes the naturalistic decision making models. Based on a systematic literature review, this paper aims to synthetize empirical studies published on journals and conferences proceedings that analyze the decision-making phenomenon in the software project management context from a naturalistic perspective. The search were conducted in five search engines: ScienceDirect, Scopus, Wiley, IEEE Xplore, and ACM Digital Library. The 27 selected papers were categorized and then synthesized into a thematic map. The categories included: agile development practices, stakeholders involvement, escalation and de-escalation of commitment factors, participatory decision-making, communication, use of rational methods, emotion, and cognitive biases. The results indicate that more studies are needed to better understand the decision-making phenomenon from this perspective.

This article presents a framework to describe how professional experts regulate complex adaptive systems (CAS), a skill found across bio-psychological, ecological, technical, and social contexts. The regulation aim is to facilitate and constrain the self-organization of a CAS; regulators engage in dynamic decision making while the system evolves. While many naive regulators are overtaxed when they encounter nonlinear and multi-causal dynamics, less is known about how experts perform. I argue that a rich set of competencies can make expert performance distinctive. The basic sensitivities for CAS that shape the general philosophy of practice and a role identity as process facilitators provide some foundation. Turning this into an applied skill set, however, additionally requires (a) the creation of mediating interfaces with a “target” CAS, (b) interaction skills for exploring and stimulating the CAS, (c) the use of domain knowledge about the system’s nature and structure for conceptualizing its state as well as dynamics, (d) the use of analogical reasoning, categories, heuristics, and models to make “if-then” inferences from systemic problem constellations to holistic strategies, and (e) synoptic and meta-regulative capabilities that allow supervising the mix of deployed resources relative to the demands of ongoing task. These CAS regulation tools mesh in variable ways and can mutually amplify each other, i.e. synergize. Illustrations for the framework come from two somatic therapies (aka bodywork), the Shiatsu and Feldenkrais methods, in which therapists use manual techniques as a regulatory means to help their clients.

Current incident command research faces several challenges. The incident commander's behaviour and related assessments in the crisis response are context bound, and our understanding of these factors requires close awareness of the context. Reconstruction of the on-scene behaviour encompassing situation awareness and cognitive reasoning is difficult. There is a need to develop better understanding of decision-making in crisis settings and methods for rigorous observation and knowledge elicitation. In order to understand the importance and actual influence of incident commanding, the researchers need to assess the response in real time, not only based on studying logs etc. afterwards. Participatory action research provides ideas in which the researcher, besides being an observer, would be involved in the rescue work. This raises ethical questions, but there is a need for naturalistic decision-making research to evolve beyond descriptive models.

This research investigates disagreements in decision making processes in a virtual setting, an experimental web simulation and in an everyday setting, involving a university research team from the Situated Action Theory perspective.
The specific focus is on disagreements, because they lead to critical situations which put at stake two vital issues that are common between the simulation and the research team, namely, a limited amount of time and mutual aims that must be met within a set deadline. More specifically the study investigates: (1) how participants manage disagreements within these two contexts and (2) which theoretical and methodological implications Situated Action Theory suggests for studying both of them.
The simulation in which the first part of this study takes place is a website in which participants had to choose a house to rent. It has been developed in four stages which involved 306 participants: a preliminary study, two validation studies and one study with single participants, in order to assess gender differences in chosen house. After the study with the single participants a study with the participants in couples (N=87) was performed, in order to study how they managed disagreements.
The second context in which this study takes place is an interdisciplinary research team which aimed at studying the access and communication of migrant citizens to public municipality services. All meetings that took place from December 2007 until May 2008 were video and/or audio recorded. The corpus of the study consists of 10 hours and 50 minutes of video recorded interactions for the experimental simulation and 9 hours and 30 minutes of video and audio recorded interactions for the research team, which have been analysed from a perspective that includes conversation analysis, field notes, analysis of documents and interviews with the participants.
Analysis shows that some aspects were common within the two contexts but also that some issues differentiated the virtual context from the everyday one. A discursive re-structuring of controversial issues allowed the participants to both contexts to reach a shared decision: decision making seems to be linked more with sense making than with a rational consideration of different alternatives. Another common characteristic of the web simulation and the research team is that the management of disagreements is mediated by the use of different micro discursive strategies studied by conversation analysts, like anticipatory completions, quotations (all of which were found within both contexts), extreme case formulations, challenging questions, format tying. However, some differences, along with important methodological implications, have been also found. Some moments of interaction, in fact, cannot not be explained by only focusing on what the participants orient as relevant for them within the interaction, while some other moments that could be explained through conversation analysis but, when we integrated such analysis with a broader ethnographic perspective, we had a very different analysis.
All the findings suggest that a simulation allows the studying of decision making processes from a situated perspective, however the research team study suggests that the results of such study should be contextualized to obtain a deeper knowledge of situated decision-making processes in everyday settings.

This article examines the similarities and differences between the traditions of naturalistic decision making and organizational decision making. Illustrative examples of successful NDM inquiry in healthcare organizations are reviewed, highlighting an area where these two pragmatic research paradigms overlap. Not only do researchers in these areas aim to improve our understanding of decision making, they provide practical and realistic alternatives to laboratory-based research on decision making. The article presents a number of propositions for future research on NDM and organizations.

Objectives: The Air Traffic Management (ATM) is the cornerstone of the air transportation system. Constant increases in the air traffic exert pressures in the Air Traffic Control (ATC), which is centrepiece of the ATM system. The Air Traffic Controllers (ATCOs) as the sharp end of the ATC balance incompatible goals with the aim of keeping the system operating inside the boundaries of safe operation. Quite frequently external and/or internal disturbances in the form of emergencies and abnormal situations challenge the stability of the ATC system and drive it towards the boundaries of safe operation. Emergencies and unusual occurrences represent critical situations close to the margins of safe operation that challenges controller operational practices and supervisory systems. Controllers intervene to minimize or where possible eliminate the consequences of destabilizing disturbances. During the handling of these situations the decision making processes of the Controllers emerge as one of the most significant element of the compensating mechanisms of the ATC system. Therefore, a critical need exists as to examine the decisionmaking performance of the Controllers during emergencies and abnormal situations. Background: Extensive relevant research has been conducted in other safety critical organizations including nuclear power plant, offshore oil platforms, aviation, military and health organizations. However, the research in PhD Thesis Author's Biography Stathis Malakis was born in Rhodes, Greece in 1971. He holds a Mathematics degree from the

Considerable progress has been made in the research on how intuitions and emotions affect decision making within the framework of Judgment and Decision Making (JDM). Much of this research was conducted in experimental settings. The present paper reports findings from a naturalistic decision making (NDM) study of how loan officers' gut feelings (emotionally laden intuitions) affect their credit decisions. In-depth interviews of fourteen loan officers in a large commercial bank in Israel revealed that they construe credit applications as both a financial transaction and an interpersonal interaction. As a consequence, they integrate "hard" financial data regarding the soundness of the application with "soft" impressions and gut feelings regarding the credibility of the loan applicant. Gut feelings are regarded as more valid indicators of the worthiness of the application than the relevant financial data. Although loan officers regard their gut feelings as semi-articulate ill-understood intuitions, these can be traced to observable specifiable cues extracted from clients' behavior.

Production planning and scheduling (PPS) requires human decision making. In this chapter, we introduce two theoretical models of Naturalistic Decision Making (NDM). Their applicability to the PPS domain has not been investigated to date. A field study in a Swiss manufacturing company is described, using existing NDM methods to study 'real world' decision making. The findings indicate that planners are using substantial amounts of general production and businessrelated knowledge to identify and solve decision problems. In their daily work, they are very much dependent on a supportive socio-technical environment that allows efficient information provision, diagnosis and interpretation of the state of affairs, and the development of expertise. The chapter closes with a discussion of NDMrelated theoretical and methodological issues, as well as some implications of our research for decision support design.

The authors present a qualitative study of voluntary career change, which highlighted the importance of positive emotions, unplanned action, and building certainty and perceiving continuity in the realization of change. Interpretative phenomenological analysis was used to broaden theoretical understanding of real-life career decision making. The accounts of 8 women who had changed careers were explored, and the analysis supported other-than-rational perspectives of career decision making. An action-affect-cognition framework of decision making is proposed. The framework adds the role of emotion and the importance of self-regulation to existing theory of career decision making. Implications for career counseling are discussed.

Without human beings’ ability to choose – and in such a way give order to a universe which, in the beginning, must have presented itself as a chaotic mass of data without clear structures and regularity – evolution would have been unthinkable, even more inconceivable if one considers the fact that the adaptation to that universe must have taken place on the basis of incomplete, fragmentary information and above all starting from limited cognitive capacities and restricted time limits. In order to respond to the challenges of the environment, an individual had to first of all be quick: quick in the reaction to the attack of a predator and in the gaining of an escape route, in deciding how to pursue pray, in obtaining gains from territory that others were using at that same moment, in the selection of a partner and of a place in which to take refuge and so forth. Therefore, if it is true that evolutionary pressure urged the human mind to accumulate information by means of a significant quota of rational decisions, the vast majority of human choices have been favoured by ecological decision making strategies.

This article examines the similarities and differences between the traditions of naturalistic decision making and organizational decision making. Illustrative examples of successful NDM inquiry in healthcare organizations are reviewed, highlighting an area where these two pragmatic research paradigms overlap. Not only do researchers in these areas aim to improve our understanding of decision making, they provide practical and realistic alternatives to laboratory-based research on decision making. The article presents a number of propositions for future research on NDM and organizations.

This article examines the similarities and differences between the traditions of naturalistic decision making and organizational decision making. Illustrative examples of successful NDM inquiry in healthcare organizations are reviewed, highlighting an area where these two pragmatic research paradigms overlap. Not only do researchers in these areas aim to improve our understanding of decision making, they provide practical and realistic alternatives to laboratory-based research on decision making. The article presents a number of propositions for future research on NDM and organizations.

In this paper we focus on to improve decision making skills by the help of simulator training. Decision theory or the process of decision making is an approach for problem solving. In the aeronautical dimension, especially in some certain cases such as emergency, the most important thing is to make decision in a short time. Ability to make good decision can be developed by training but it cannot be said that all good decisionmakers have education on it. In some cases, decision-makers make good decisions in the light of their experience, observation and mental preparation of the situation. It's observed that among the other factors mental preparation is the most effective way to make good decisions. A pilot is supposed to make a decision in a very short time when an emergency occurs. The ability to make a good decision is based upon good judgment. Various factors may affect judgment. The best way to improve the judgment ability is to make practices in advance. Simulators have importance in this respect and it's possible to make various practices with simulators.

This study investigated the dynamics of communication between members of an emergency management team faced with controlling a hazardous chemical spill. The effects of two sets of factors on communication were investigated; task-specific factors pertaining to characteristics of the emergency management task that are constant across different emergency situations, and situationspecific factors pertaining to the unique characteristics of the current situation. The results showed that both these factors were important in determining the pattern of communication between key team members. Verbal exchanges were found both to be correlated with the occurrence of critical events and to follow a 30-minute temporal cycle. The implications of the results for theories of naturalistic decision making are discussed.

L’objectif de cet article est de fournir des pistes méthodologiques à l’approche naturaliste de la décision (Naturalistic Decision Making - NDM) lui permettant de se situer au plus près des individus-experts afin de saisir la fabrication instantanée de la décision comme un processus multisitué. Pour ce faire, nous discutons les apports de l’ethnographie organisationnelle (EO) en tant que démarche in vivo et in situ qui rend mouvants le temps et l’espace d’observation afin de traquer la décision en situation et de prendre en compte les actions antérieurement expérimentées et ultérieurement construites par les individus dans leurs environnements naturalistes. Cet article propose ainsi d’étudier la décision, à la fois comme un acte local et comme un processus multisitué.

The aim of this paper is to examine the cognitive processes through which operators make decisions when dealing with microincidents during their actual work, and to determine whether they use a naturalistic or normative decision making strategy. That is, do they try to recognize a microincident as familiar and base decisions on pattern recognition, tacit knowledge, or condition-action rules (naturalistic), or do they need to concurrently compare and contrast options, before selecting the best possible according standard operating procedures (normative)? The method employed for data collection was a cognitive task analysis (CTA) based on operators' activities. The main finding of this research was that decision making is primarily based on naturalistic strategies. These findings contrast the normative behavior prescribed by the organization's work design and their standards of competency for training and evaluation operators work. Relevance to industry: This study presents a situated method to describe how sharp end operators make decisions during microincidents that occurs in normal operation, emphasizing how the sociotechnical environment affects their cognitive strategies, which is one of the basic steps for an organization that wants to enhance the safety culture. r

This paper aims at analysing decisions which are actually made by watch officers onboard ferries in the Dover Strait. More precisely, it aims at characterizing the generic situations in which several courses of actions are available and identifying the strategy underlying an action choice. Relying on the RPD model of Klein . The recognitionprimed decision (RPD) model: Looking back, looking forward. In C. E. Zsambok & G. Klein (Eds.), Naturalistic decision making (pp. 285-292). Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates], it points out the critical cues, the goals of actors and the rules they use.

How do senior executives, such as CEOs and CFOs, interact,
select and appoint professional advisors?
Based on a successful PhD project, the research in this
book explores the interactions between advisors of large
professional service firms and senior executive clients on an
evidence-based academic level.
The research journey and the author’s reflections are charted
step-by-step, providing an example of how to analyse
unstructured qualitative data, reach theoretical saturation and
capture emerging substantive theories. Moreover, by taking
a unique holistic and inductive approach, this study offers
a series of practical insights on how to combine and apply
Kathy Charmaz’ constructivist grounded theory with an autoethnographic stance.
Divided into eight chapters, the author uses empirical data
and rigorous analysis to uncover two distinct decision-making
processes, namely (a) the client’s decision to develop and
maintain a relationship with the advisor and (b) to select
and appoint the advisor for a particular project or services.
Mapping these to one common conceptual framework a
second complementary model emerges - a type of decisionmaking matrix with the foci ’competitiveness, skills and merit’,
‘continuity and embeddedness’, ‘control and manage’ and
‘trust and empathy’ - which offers the reader an alternative
perspective of client decision-making.
This book will be useful for practitioners and researchers alike
who have an interest in understanding either naturalistic
decision-making processes, the complexities of relationship
development and procurement dynamics, as well as applied
qualitative research methods.

The Tactical Group Decision Aiding System supports co-located or distributed teams who are planning missions requiring the selection of one among several possible options. Team members propose courses of action by creating scenarios, i.e., causally linked sequences of actions, key factors or events in the past, present, or future, and short or long-term mission outcomes. The TGDAS builds formally correct decision models via a scenario matrix that compares scenarios and identifies significant branch points, and by means of pre-stored editable templates that supply variables and relationships matching the scenario branch points in the relevant type of mission and situation. Modelbased analyses order the options and let the collaborative team focus on variables that have the most impact on decisions and outcomes.

Our objective is to capture temporal patterns in mental model convergence processes and differences in these patterns between distributed teams using an electronic collaboration space and face-to-face teams with no interface. Distributed teams, as sociotechnical systems, collaborate via technology to work on their task. The way in which they process information to inform their mental models may be examined via team communication and may unfold differently than it does in face-to-face teams. We conducted our analysis on 32 three-member teams working on a planning task. Half of the teams worked as distributed teams in an electronic collaboration space, and the other half worked face-to-face without an interface. Using event history analysis, we found temporal interdependencies among the initial convergence points of the multiple mental models we examined. Furthermore, the timing of mental model convergence and the onset of task work discussions were related to team performance. Differ...

Objective: This article aims to explore the nature and resolution of breakdowns in coordinated decision making in distributed safety-critical systems. Background: In safety-critical domains, people with different roles and responsibilities often must work together to make coordinated decisions while geographically distributed. Although there is likely to be a large degree of overlap in the shared mental models of these people on the basis of procedures and experience, subtle differences may exist. Method: Study 1 involves using Aviation Safety Reporting System reports to explore the ways in which coordinated decision making breaks down between pilots and air traffic controllers and the way in which the breakdowns are resolved. Study 2 replicates and extends those findings with the use of transcripts from the Apollo 13 National Aeronautics and Space Administration space mission. Results: Across both studies, breakdowns were caused in part by different types of lower-level breakdowns (or disconnects), which are labeled as operational, informational, or evaluative. Evaluative disconnects were found to be significantly harder to resolve than other types of disconnects. Conclusion: Considering breakdowns according to the type of disconnect involved appears to capture useful information that should assist accident and incident investigators. The current trend in aviation of shifting responsibilities and providing increasingly more information to pilots may have a hidden cost of increasing evaluative disconnects. Application: The proposed taxonomy facilitates the investigation of breakdowns in coordinated decision making and draws attention to the importance of considering subtle differences between participants’ mental models when considering complex distributed systems.