Decision Making: Social and Creative Dimensions

Abstract

This volume presents research that integrates decision making and creativity within the social contexts in which these processes occur. The volume is an essential addition to and expansion of recent approaches to decision making. Such approaches attempt to incorporate more of the psychological and socio-cultural context in which human decision making takes place. The authors come from different disciplines and also belong to a broad spectrum of research traditions. They present innovative chapters dealing with both theoretical and empirical aspects of decision making in different personal and organizational contexts. All chapters are written from the perspective that human decision making is inherently social and more or less creative. The volume addresses fundamental questions about the nature of human decision making as it occurs in different social contexts. Thereby, it becomes essential reading for researchers in decision making and for advanced students in psychology, management science, informatics, and related disciplines.

The present volume deals with social and creative aspects of decision making. Such aspects have, to some extent, been neglected in previous behavioral research. The volume contributes to the integration of theories, concepts and empirical results from different research traditions and in this way helps to better our understanding of the decision making process. The chapters hereby complements research achievements that have been presented under different headings such as 'naturalistic decision making', 'distributed decision making', and 'applied creativity' . Most of the contributing authors are from psychology, other come from management science, health science, education, policy and planning, and informatics. Several of the chapters address basic and general issues with regard to the social and creative dimensions of decision making. Other chapters deal with personal decision making and different aspects of decision making in organizations.