Systemic Decision Support in a Complex Business Environment

This paper presents a so-called systemic decision support system (SDSS) to support decision-making in a complex business environment. The approach can be applied by both private and public enterprises and organisations in their long-term strategic considerations. The approach consists of a framework that is adapted to the particular task by combining appropriate methodologies of different type and nature. Both “soft” and “hard” operations research (OR) methods are applied, for example, Critical Systems Heuristics (CSH) and multi-criteria analysis (MCA) making use of Monte Carlo simulation. As argued in the paper, rationality and optimisation as relating to traditional OR methods become difficult to vindicate and validate in complex decision environments, for which reason it is proposed instead by SDSS to assist the decision-makers by providing decision support based on the contrasting of different insights as successive steps in a wider exploration and learning cycle. The systemic approach is illustrated by a practical example that concerns the decision-making relating to the Øresund Fixed Link. Although this concerns one particular problem type: complex public decision-making, the treatment of the example has made it evident that systemic decision support is well suited for complex strategic decisionmaking in both public and private settings. Finally some conclusions and a perspective are given.