Three Phases In Decision Making process

You can define decision making as the process of choosing between alternatives to achieve a goal. But if you closely look into this process of selecting among available alternatives, you will he able to identify three relatively distinct stages. Put into a time framework, you will find : 

1. The past, in which problems developed, information accumulated and the need for a decision was perceived; 
2. The present, in which alternatives are found and the choice is made: and 
3. The future, in which decisions will be carried out and evaluated. 

Herbert Simon, the well-known Nobel laureate, decision theorist, described the activities associated with three major stages in the following way : 

1. Intelligence Activity : Borrowing from the military meaning of intelligence Simon describes this initial phase as an attempt to recognize and understand the nature of the problem, as well as search for the possible causes, 
2. Design Activity : During the  second phase, alternative courses of action are developed and analysed in the light of known constraints, and 
3. Choice Activity : The actual choice among-available and assessed alternatives is made at this stage. 

If you have followed the nature of activities of these three phases, you should be able to see why the quality of any decision is largely influenced by the thoroughness of the intelligence and design phases. 

Heruy Minbberg and sonic of his colleagues (1976) have traced the phases of some decisions actually taken in organisations. They have also come up with a three-phase model as shown in Figure. 

Mintzberg's Empirically based Phases of a Decision-Making in Organisation

Note that the decision making is a dynamic process and there are many feedback loops in each of the phases. These feedback loops can be caused by problem of tingling, politics, disagreement among decision-makers, inability to identify an appropriate alternative or to implement the solution or the sudden appearance of a new alternative etc. So, though on the surface, any decision-making appears to be a fairly simple three-stage process, it could actually be a highly complex dynamic process.