Title: Spontaneous Decision Conferencing with Top-Level Politicians - Discovering the Hidden Demand for Support in Political Decision Making

Authors: Raimo P. Hämäläinen and Ossi Leikola

Status: OR Insight, Vol. 9, Issue 1, January-March 1996, pp. 24-28.

This article describes a real project involving members of the Finnish Parliament. The results of the project demonstrate that there is a useful role for decision analysis techniques in real political decision making. We show how the Decision Conferencing technique can be modified to adapt to the particular needs of top-level politicians. The modified version of the technique, which we call Spontaneous Decision Conferencing (SDC), helps decision makers to structure and clarify complex decision problem and thereby helps them to reason and justify their decisions better.