The use of decision analysis for organizational design: reorganizing a community hospital

Strategic Issue Analysis: NGT + Decision Analysis for Resolving Strategic Issues

This article discusses how nominal group technique (NGT) can be combined with a decision analysis (DA) technique-simple multi-attribute utility-to assist decision makers in dealing with strategic issues. The authors identify a stepwise means of guiding such complex, "messy" issues through multiple levels so that organization-level alternatives can be considered without sacrificing unit-specific needs. A detailed case study is presented in which an organization consisting of many independently functioning divisions and subdivisions used NGT + DA along with group decision methodology to devise and choose from among alternatives for an integrated computer system. The organization was able to achieve consensus as to the system adopted, and informal and survey feedback from participants indicates their satisfaction with the process. The authors conclude that NGT + DA is relatively easy and inexpensive to use and transparent to the user, and call for research to assess its relative strengths compared to other combined techniques using NGT.