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Int. J. Management and Decision Making, Vol. 1, No. 1, 2000

The logic of a command methodology: decision conferencing reconceptualized John de Reuck

School of Business, Murdoch University, South Street, Murdoch, Western Australia 6150

Olive Schmidenberg and Des Klass

Graduate School of Business, Curtin University of Technology, 30th Floor, QV1 Building, 250 St Georges Tce, Perth, Western Australia 6000
Abstract: This paper seeks to develop the theory of Decision Conferencing and thus to enhance the capability of this group decision support system. Identified as under-theorized are (a) the idea of instrumental rationality underpinning the modelling process, (b) the role of power in groups, (c) the definition of the group and (d) the goals of the process. The authors discuss the problems experienced in their practice of Decision Conferencing which led to the development of their Command Methodology, founded on the Habermasian concept of communicative rationality and a methodologically individual view of the group. This reformulation allows the issue of power to be explicitly theorized and the goals of Decision Conferencing to be redefined. The authors discuss the implications of the Command Methodology for the conduct and facilitation of Decision Conference workshops, and describe the conditions and procedures for its application. Keywords: Group decision support systems; decision conference; strategic planning; theory of decision conferencing; Habermas; rationality; strategic design support. R e f e r e n c e to this paper should be made as follows: De Reuck, J., Schmidenberg, O. and Klass, D. (2000) The logic of a command methodology: decision conferencing reconceptualized, Int. J. Management and Decision Making, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp.213. Biographical notes: John de Reuck lectures in the School of Business at Murdoch University, Western Australia. His research interests include semiotic theory, theories of justification and critical reasoning. He teaches units in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences in the Schools DBA Programme as well as an undergraduate unit in Business and Technical Communication. He is currently completing his PhD in the Semantics of Semiotics. Olive Schmidenberg is an Organizational Psychologist and a Senior Lecturer in the Graduate School of Business in Curtin University of Technology, Western Australia. Her major area of academic and research interest is in strategic management and strategic decision support systems. She is a founding member of Curtin Universitys Strategic Planning and Decisions Unit, which specializes in the Decision Conferencing process. Through the Unit, and in association with Des Klass, she has consulted widely to both small and large organizations.

Copyright 2000 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

The logic of a command methodology: decision conferencing reconceptualized 3

Des Klass is a Senior Lecturer in the Graduate School of Business at Curtin University of Technology, Western Australia. His background is in information systems and decision analysis. His research interest is in Group Decision Support Systems and in Decision Conferencing in particular. Des is the Director of the Strategic Planning and Decisions Unit at Curtin University and has consulted widely, both locally and internationally, with industry and public sector organizations.

Introduction

Decision Conferencing is a group decision support system (GDSS) with great potential for application in organizational settings, such as, for example, in strategic planning. A Decision Conference is a process designed to assist the deliberations of a group of people who, with the support of one or more facilitators and on-the-spot computer modelling, have come together to make a complex group decision [15]. The goals of Decision Conferencing, traditionally understood, are to promote:
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a shared understanding among participants of the issues under discussion and a commitment to act on the outcomes of the Decision Conference.

This paper will argue for a competing account of the central goals of Decision Conferencing. It will involve an augmentation of the accepted role of shared understanding, and a re-thinking of commitment in order to recognize the reality of commitments which can be made in bad faith, with all the subsequent problems for the management of change that ensue from this. The main feature that differentiates Decision Conferencing from other facilitated work groups is the computer modelling capability around which a facilitation process has been developed. The modelling process has theoretical roots in Decision Theory [6] and a concept of decision-making based on instrumental rationality. We have argued elsewhere [7] that the process of group communication and facilitation in which the modelling is embedded is less strongly theorized. We have also argued that the underlying interpretation of rationality is inadequate to accommodate the social and communicative aspects of group interaction and is not sufficiently robust to integrate the two component parts of the Decision Conference, viz., modelling on the one hand and facilitation and communication on the other. These views arose out of the extensive use of Decision Conference by these authors in the conduct of strategy workshops with groups of executives. The problems we experienced led us to develop what we have termed the Command Methodology as an alternative theoretical foundation for the facilitation of Decision Conferences. The Command Methodology attempted the construction of a conceptual framework that could integrate and vindicate the procedures we were instituting in our practices. The purpose of this paper is to restate and further elaborate the core ideas to which we had recourse in evolving our notion of a Command Methodology. We turn first to the central notion underlying Decision Conferencing, that of rationality as it is embedded in the context of group decision-making. A consequence of this reconceptualization will challenge, we shall argue, the orthodox understanding of Decision Conference support.

J.de Reuck, O. Schmidenberg and D. Klass

Rationality assumptions

The raison dtre for Decision Conferencing is to encourage consistent, rational judgements across multiple criteria in group decision-making. We believe that underlying the standard rationality assumption employed in Decision Conference support is a deep structured analogue taken from the Humean model of strategic or instrumental rationality. In David Humes words: reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them. [8, p.415]. Here the individual, immediately aware of his/her desires, uses reason to explore the most economical way of realizing the conditions under which those desires could be satisfied. Particularly noteworthy in this model of rationality is its de-politicization in the sense that it is dissociated from notions of moral value and of power. This deeply embedded analogue then determines the way the rationality assumption will work in Decision Conferencing. With its traditional stress on shared understanding, group diversity is collapsed into a conception of a collective mind, allowing it to function as the Humean single individual writ large. One of the direct consequences of conceptualizing the group mind in this way is that Decision Conference theorists carry this isolation of the Humean individual from social power into their conception of the group. Without a recognition of the central notion of social power, cognitive distortions resulting from the play of power in groups cannot be addressed. By freeing our model from this constraining analogue the rationality assumption we invoke (largely Habermasian) allows us to engage directly with, and, by introducing procedural constraints, quarantine these cognitively distorting functions of power. The modelling process in Decision Conferencing derives from the theory of rational choice, which retains most of the features of Humean instrumental rationality, but has been adapted to apply to groups. The chief adaptation is that the utility value score is not treated as the end product of the process [9] and is not used as a solution generating mechanism. The utility value score is the springboard from which the group is encouraged to explore, amend and debate in order to create a shared understanding of the issues and a commitment to act on the outcomes of the Decision Conference. To accommodate group dynamic effects which are outside the explanatory scope of its instrumentally rational assumptions, Decision Conferencing calls on neo-Freudian ideas about the group and group dynamics to underpin facilitation activities and explain group functioning [10] whilst retaining instrumental rationality as the basis for modelling. Thus, at the heart of Decision Conferencing is a conceptual disjunction. The concept of instrumental rationality underlying the modelling function is inadequate to accommodate fully the social and communicative aspects of the Decision Conference. At the same time, the communicative and social functions are theorized under a psychosocial model that, in its turn, sits uncomfortably with the instrumentally rational approach of Decision Theory.

2.1 The concept of social power

It is our intention by working with an alternative rationality assumption, to allow the Decision Conferencing procedures to be power sensitive. A brief excursion into the standard analysis of social power might be appropriate at this point for we shall argue that many of the shortcomings of Decision Conferencing as currently theorized can be sheeted home to the undervaluing of the role of power in groups. Barnes [11], following

The logic of a command methodology: decision conferencing reconceptualized 5 Lukess [12] well-known analysis of power, correctly draws our attention to the facilitative role of power where, by sharing knowledge over a social field, the group can achieve outcomes unachievable without such group cooperation. Here this positive sense of power enhances the reach of human achievement. It is within this positive dimension of social power that we wish to reconceptualize Decision Conferencing. This sense of empowerment must be clearly distinguished from a dominating sense of power, which corrosively undermines any sense of emancipating rationality. Lukes argues that its corrosive effects function in a multi-dimensional manner. The dimensions Lukes refers to are specified on an epistemic scale where the more covert forms of power are identified at the tertiary dimension of power. Thus the first dimension of power over would be realized at the brute level where the victim of the power play is clearly aware of his or her loss. The second dimension, agenda power, a more covert form of power, structures the field of their victims opportunities in ways that are not always consciously recognized by the victim. The most covert dimension in Lukess analysis is that of ideological power where, borrowing from an earlier insight of Barthes [13], ideological power fulfils an essentially transformative role. Its effectiveness lies in transforming the receivers experience of social power as the experience of a form of natural power. This allows receivers to endorse a worldview that is directly counter to their best interests. This move essentially depoliticizes the socially instituted patterns of privilege and dispossession. The following shortcomings, which we have identified in the outcomes of our practice, are largely generated, we believe, by the presence of coercive power. The most important of these problems appear to be the following: Epistemic contamination inauthentic commitment and social compliance In any Decision Conference, it is possible for the facilitators, without knowing it, to be faced with resistant receivers who as a result of the distribution of power within the group, conceal their resistance by outward signs of acquiescence. In situations like this where commitment is made in bad faith, resistance may only manifest itself later, in the tardiness of the implementation of the decision outcomes. Silencing of alternative views When views are stated and uncontested in the group, we as facilitators are tempted to attribute this to group consensus. This, we now believe, reflects a misplaced trust in the uncoerced, power-free nature of the debate and constrains both the cognitive reach and the cognitive quality of the discussion. Epistemic assurance The quality of a decision rests entirely upon the quality of the supporting argument and this quality, it is clear, is undermined in the absence of competing arguments for opposing positions. To the extent that counter-arguments are not put on the table the quality of the decision is compromised. This might reflect a weakness in the stated aims of Decision Conferencing (i.e. shared understanding and commitment to action) which do not explicitly address the quality of decision-making. We shall return to this point later in our reformulation of the goals of Decision Conferencing. A commitment to failing strategies In our experience, because Decision Conferencing is power-nave, inappropriate conceptions of leadership can displace the authority of the better argument

J.de Reuck, O. Schmidenberg and D. Klass [14, p.145] with the result that decision outcomes can become aligned with the distribution of power within the firm. Any challenge to these decisions is therefore experienced as a challenge to the distribution of power in the firm. Thus inferior decisions may fail to be reviewed.

The task of managing change This problem emerges with the recognition of inauthentic commitments. Agents, where possible, will disown inauthentically made commitments disassociating themselves in a multiplicity of covert ways from the action plan. The problem of managing change has traditionally not been a problem for Decision Conference facilitators because change has been uncritically linked to the conceptual notion of a genuinely shared commitment to acting. The rejection of this assumption challenges Decision Conference practitioners to address the issues of change management surrounding Decision Conferencing. A dogmatic methodology Social compliance ensures inauthentic commitment. There is nothing in the Decision Conference process, currently conceptualized, that guarantees a safe adversarial speaking position to all participants, so criticism of any commitment by the dominant group to a failing strategy is discouraged from being publicly avowed. What is absent in the procedures is a formally defined trigger for review. We return to this later. Loss of honest broker status for the facilitators The danger here is that facilitators may be seen to have aligned themselves with the authority structures of the executive leadership team. A power-nave theory of Decision Conferencing leaves the facilitators open to a perception that they occupy a power-compromised position. Too narrow a conception of the client and consequently too narrow a conception of the stakeholders in the debate can lead to a cooption of the Decision Conference to the agenda of the power holders.

To deal with these issues, our Command Methodology draws on the Habermasian concept of communicative rationality [14] to supplant the instrumental rationality assumption. Communicative rationality explicitly recognizes the social context within which decisions are made. At the heart of this reconceptualization, lies the notion of the group.

2.2 The nature of the group

Because of our rejection of the Humean instrumental rationality assumption as appropriate for Decision Conferencing we wish to resist the pressure to conceive the group holistically. We wish to remain committed to the ethos of naturalism and the principle of methodological individualism. Methodological individualism holds that any social fact can be reduced without loss to facts about individual psychology. In the next section we will address the rationality assumption we wish to put in place. Following Hollis [15] we view group participants as individuals each with a role within the firm identified by specific duties and obligations. In the case of strategy workshops this role carries with it the authority and/or responsibility for some aspect of strategy development and/or implementation. We recognize that, as individuals, participants have different levels of authority consistent with the roles they occupy. We

The logic of a command methodology: decision conferencing reconceptualized 7 wish to maximize the quality of the groups decision outcomes by creating an environment for individuals to achieve a role distance between the speakers from the authority that is conferred on them by the role that they fulfil. They do this by agreeing to the conditions for non-coerced debate spelled out below which will govern their Decision Conference strategy workshop. This institutional authority operating within the confines of a Decision Conference workshop can interfere with the authority of the better argument. Clearly it is this latter authority that we wish to recognize as the sole authority in a Decision Conference. This needs to be handled sensitively as it may be experienced as challenging the leadership of the CEO. An agreement to non-coerced debate by members of the executive team of a firm is at the same time a suspension of the differential authority privileges that attach to their rank. With this willing suspension of authority privileges, the members of the executive team also distance themselves from any leadership roles. We are looking for a community of enquirers who interact collegially. The group is postulated as a bridge from the decisions reached in Decision Conferencing to the actions taken under the action plan. On the traditional model of Decision Conferencing the transition from decisions to action was warranted by all members of the group creating as it were a group mind and committing equally to act on the decision outcome. However Decision Conferencing is silent on exactly how commitment to act is engendered. It seems to be implied that commitment arises via shared understanding. Our reservations about the notion of shared understanding which we outline below, encourage us to side-step this difficulty and take a more pragmatic and direct route. All that is required is to act in accordance with the demands of collective responsibility. This is merely the commitment by each member of the group to take collective responsibility for the consensus position reached by the group. This allows for some members of the group to hold views completely contrary to the consensus position. We shall argue that such articulated contrary positions ultimately contribute to the greater benefit of the group. We must, however, distinguish between the notion of corporate identity and group identity. There is an illegitimate slide in the move from the acceptable legal notion of corporate identity to what we believe is the illegitimate metaphysical notion of group identity. We expect the individuals understanding of the strategic issues facing the firm to differ in some more or less significant way from the consensus position reached by the executive group. Not only do we anticipate this variance, but would be highly suspicious of its absence, suspecting that it would be an indicator of unacknowledged coercive structures operative in the group. This raises the issue of what is involved in shared understanding. There are two interpretations of the meaning of the term shared understanding in the literature. The first denotes a group in which all members understand an issue or an outcome in the same way. The second meaning refers to a group in which all members understand each others positions and the differences in those positions, but come to agreement on a position which they believe will best benefit the group. This latter is the interpretation endorsed by Phillips for Decision Conferencing. Our view is that the first interpretation of shared understanding given above is totally untenable for Decision Conferencing. The consensus position is a sub-class of all the opinions held by the group at the end of the Decision Conferencing session and comprises those opinions held in common by the majority of members. If anybody finds the consensus position to coincide fully with his or her own position, then that person is

J.de Reuck, O. Schmidenberg and D. Klass

in all likelihood taking his or her views from the consensus position rather than contributing to the debate that led to the formation of the consensus position. If thinking people come to a consensus position that coincides with all the opinions of the group then, we argue, this is evidence that the group of thinkers is either affected by structures of coercion or has no independence of mind. This has implications for the notion of shared understanding. To the extent that the understanding approximates a fully shared understanding, we would argue the debate either has encroached into areas of coercion or displays a marked degree of intellectual dependence. Along with other Decision Conference theorists, we largely endorse the second interpretation of shared understanding, with the single proviso that the group need not come to an agreement on a position which they will all believe will best benefit the group. We recognize that some participants might not share this belief at all. Beliefs clearly cannot be coerced, but what collective responsibility demands is a preparedness to acquiesce to the majority view, not to endorse it intellectually. Thus we dispense with shared understanding as the conceptual vehicle that delivers consensus, as the demands of collective responsibility fulfil this function. We argue that a power-insensitive theory of Decision Conferencing that does not have the dominance of the better argument as an explicit primary condition cannot fully capitalize on intellectual diversity as a resource for future strategic flexibility and development.

2.3 A revised rationality assumption

We have argued that instrumental rationality is an inappropriate model for the role of rationality in a social setting. We want to apply Barness notion of facilitative power where the creative intellectual energies of all are drawn on in a collective endeavour aimed at the benefit of all. Here the intellectual resources that can be summoned are multiple (unlike the assumption of the isolated Humean ego appealed to in the previous rationality assumption) and any diminution of these resources impoverishes the conversation. The multi-perspectival dimension of the social enquiry allows for the final decisions taken by the group to meet the highest standards of quality possible for that group. We suggest a set of procedures that allows for the emergence of the best bet decision outcomes under conditions of maximum intellectual competition. This concept of best bet acknowledges that we are dealing with the logic of justification recognizing that under the conditions of uncertainty in which firms operate the most thoughtful judgement can be wrong. The Command Methodology dictates procedures to maximize openness of discussion and to minimize distortions arising from silencing manoeuvres. The result is the most rational decision that that executive group is capable of reaching at that time. The processes these procedures specify will involve non-coerced adversarial debate. This will incorporate Popperian notions of falsifiability [16] together with the intuitions of Habermas that together stress the essential requirement that debate be uncoerced, hence avoiding the distortions occasioned by a variety of power plays.

The goals for decision conferencing

The traditional stated aims of Decision Conferencing address shared understanding and commitment to action that the process of facilitation is meant to support. No public

The logic of a command methodology: decision conferencing reconceptualized 9 claims are made about the process of facilitation enhancing the cognitive potential of the group and therefore no claims are advanced promising an improved cognitive quality of the decision capability of the group. As a result of the twin goals of shared understanding and commitment to action that characterize the traditional model of Decision Conferencing, the theory lacks adequate procedures that are directly aimed at enhancing the cognitive quality possessed by any specific group. Our reconceptualization foregrounds the issue of epistemic assurance and proceeds to formulate directly the procedures that will allow our facilitation to meet this goal. As a result our procedures are consciously informed by the imperative continually to enhance cognitively the arguments that determine the best bet. It is our belief that this fore-grounding of epistemic assurance is implicit in Decision Conferencing as traditionally conceived, but its stated goals preclude the operationalization of this shared intuition. This is so because the theoretical assumption locates the obligations for cognitive assurance with the executive team. It thus seems that any cognitive intervention shifts the fundamentally neutral role of facilitators as process consultants towards a more directive consultative function. This shift is of extreme concern to us as well, as we wish to endorse the neutral role of facilitators. In order to finesse the horns of this dilemma we theorize a procedural and not an interventionist orientation. This still leaves us endorsing a shared understanding as reconceptualized above as well as accepting the central notion of commitment to action. Our reformulation of the goals of Decision Conferencing therefore augments and redirects the traditional goals with the emphasis on quality characterizing our shift to the Command Methodology. The implementation of a Command Methodology is thus vindicated by its deliverance of epistemic assurance through its exploration of multiple perspectives adversarially argued for, coupled to its elimination of coercive power structures.

3.1 Procedures for quarantining dominating power 3.1.1 Maintaining a commitment to mutual respect
Of particular concern to us was the executive group whose participation is more often a function of social compliance than authentic participation. We have called such participants resistant receivers. The challenge here was not only to rethink the role of the executive group who made up our clientele, but to involve them as active participants as colleagues mutually seeking the reconciliation of a multiplicity of divergent readings held both internally and externally to the group. The cause of the antagonism we were detecting in these groups during the process of Decision Conferencing was typically diffused within the group and clearly seemed to originate in its historical wake. They trailed, as it were, clouds of concealed resentment to the threat of an inauthentically conceived open conversation. At times the coercive strictures we were detecting surfaced with a vengeance as when the newly appointed CEO of our last group of conferencees explicitly warned his team to expect their contracts to be terminated if they did not come up to scratch in the ensuing Decision Conferencing session. The realization that we were often dealing with a covert resistant receivership (other than the CEO) left us with a three-fold task. If we were to control the disruptive modalities at play within the group dynamic we would have to:

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J.de Reuck, O. Schmidenberg and D. Klass render the conversation authentically open; get the executive group to rethink their roles in the conversation; and undermine the perceived zero sum logic (i.e. the win-lose assumptions) of the conversation.

The three dimensions of this problematic required an integrated solution. Common to all three aspects of the task was the need to inculcate a reciprocal epistemic respect of one for another in the group. If this could not be achieved then the inter-subjective exchanges would always reflect the interplay of individual instrumental reasoning and win-lose attitudes, as opposed to the mutually cooperative venture that we wished them to embark upon in their collegial endeavour. The notion of epistemic respect [17] was to prove of central significance in our reconceptualization of Decision Conferencing and was to become the fulcrum around which we were to effect the change in the resistant nature that was proving so corrosive of mutual trust among the conferencees. What was needed, we came to realize, was a freshly formulated inter-subjectivity constituted along Habermasian lines. An open espousal of the requirement of inter-subjectivity and the detailing of the ways in which our procedures are intended to support such an intersubjectivity, are central to the reorientation of the resistant receiver. We shall discuss the timing of such disclosures below.

3.1.2 Maintaining transparency of facilitation

We believe this can be achieved by: declaring at a pre-conference stage our theoretical understanding of Decision Conferencing and notifying all the members of the executive group that our facilitating intervention, like any other intervention in the conversation, is subject to challenge. It is at this point that we explain that the methodology is inappropriate for those who, out of their own interests, would like to pre-empt the decision outcomes. This precludes the methodology being used as a rationalization and legitimation process for decisions taken prior to its implementation. recognizing that the onus is upon us to respond at any stage of the Decision Conference to any challenge raised against our facilitation of the conversation with a thoughtful rejoinder that can in its turn be further challenged. In other words there can be no silencing of the debate by an appeal to first principles. All procedures are held pragmatically and subject at any time to challenge; allowing the facilitators recourse to group support technologies that allow for anonymity of input and anonymity of challenge.

3.2 Procedures for assuring the quality of the decision outcomes (epistemic assurance)
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Maintaining the groups tolerance and active support for counter argument; Maintaining the question why? i.e. continually striving to surface the reasoning that underlies the positions advanced;

The logic of a command methodology: decision conferencing reconceptualized 11

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Not merely accepting non-contested views as evincing group consensus, but actively seeking to surface the arguments that support those views with the intention of eliciting counter-views Structuring the Decision Conferencing sessions such that at critical points we allow for periods of reflection; Implementing techniques to capture and record contrasting views; Ensuring that participants fully understand the modelling process and its implications, particularly cognitively demanding concepts like swing weights, by prior instruction and rehearsal.

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The responsibility for implementing these procedures lies with the facilitator. This dictates that the role of the facilitator be expanded beyond the traditional Decision Conference facilitators functions to include a cognitive custodial function actively to monitor adherence to the above procedures. This cognitive custodial role requires facilitators to develop new skills of conceptual analysis gained through a deeper understanding of the formal conditions for the soundness of argumentation.

3.3 Outcomes of the open conversation structured by these procedures

Authentic commitment Because of the transparent and open nature of the conversation, coupled to group recognition of the essentially self-correcting nature of the process, individual commitment to the group decision is uncoerced and hence freely given. The problematic here is how to ensure genuine compliance with decisions that some executives might still strongly contest. The answer lies in the groups genuine embrace of the Command Methodology. Those in major disagreement with the final decision outcomes can be confident that the process gives them the freedom to continually participate in developing or adapting the decisions made. This continued participation constitutes a trigger mechanism that allows contenders to reactivate the debate if and when the endorsed strategic decision is shown to be inappropriate or unwise, for whatever reason and gives the firm maximum access to the creative resources of its executive team. The methodology directly challenges the pressures within group debate that encourage convergence of opinion, instead rewarding the free expression of beliefs and ideas. Enhanced rationality The methodology recognizes the only authority that can legitimately be appealed to, is the authority of the superior argument. As dominating power diminishes, the quality of rational thought increases. Decision flexibility The flexibility of the decision outcomes generated by this methodology is a direct function of seeking, exploring, recording and maximizing the opportunities for different views. The methodology encourages the critical evaluation of the views at any point in the process. It does this by encouraging thoughtful challenges at all times. The best of the challenges that fail to be collectively endorsed are held in reserve to be revisited at the behest of their advocates, when future developments

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J.de Reuck, O. Schmidenberg and D. Klass suggest that the decision outcomes might lead to the phenomenon of commitment to failing strategies. This reserve coverage, always available to be called upon, is what renders the decisions defeasible. The formal expectation of the advocates of the reserve coverage to reconvene the Decision Conferencing session when they believe the circumstances have altered significantly enough to strengthen the counterpositions they advanced, constitutes the triggering that ensures decisions are subject to a self-correcting procedure.

Best bet outcomes quality assurance The methodology ensures maximum exposure to critical evaluation of all proposals advanced. This Popperian falsifiability requirement is thus satisfied by ensuring the proposals that are ultimately endorsed by the group taking collective responsibility for them, have survived the most stringent conceptual evaluation of which the group is capable under the conditions and procedures of the methodology, guaranteeing maximum openness. Ownership of organizational purposes The process, in its attempt to eliminate all forms of coercive power, challenges the possible agenda power of pre-existing organizational purposes. The procedures require that the purposes of the organization be subjected to the same critical evaluation that the strategic objectives are subject to under the same conditions of non-coerced open debate. Facilitation of the management of change Compliance with decision outcomes is often rendered problematic by a failure of all the executives genuinely to support the decision outcomes. Support that is achieved through pressures of compliance directly leads to implementation problems. The procedures instituted under this methodology conceptualize Decision Conferencing as an on-going process, rather than a one-off event. The result is that people more freely commit to the open decision-enhancing process. Thus through commitment freely given to the non-coerced process of decision-making stipulated by the methodology, disagreement with the decision outcomes does not lead to noncompliance. This is so because the individual executives are confident that the process approach allows for change over time. There are now no longer grounds for being systematically disaffected, as the entire process is dynamic and self-correcting. The methodology as a legitimation device If decisions are coerced through subtle power plays, they have no legitimacy. People are understandably alienated from decisions thus determined. Because the methodology we apply is explicitly concerned with non-coerced, open and just procedures, the decision outcomes are legitimated. The methodology guards against the risk of facilitators being coopted by any hidden agendas of the power brokers. The transparency of the methodology guarantees the honest broker status of the facilitators.

The command methodology

In summary, the aims of the Command Methodology are to create an environment for authentic debate in which divergent opinions are recognized and utilized, the force of the

The logic of a command methodology: decision conferencing reconceptualized 13 better argument may dominate and the best bet decision may be reached. These goals have an explicit emphasis on the quality of the process, the quality of the debate and the quality of the decisions ultimately reached. The procedures laid down by the methodology promote the quality of the decisions endorsed and allow, through an adversarial contest of competing candidates, the emergence of the agreed best option. These procedures are thus necessary for the emergence of the best option. They are also sufficient for the generation of decisions without the addition of any further procedures. It is precisely because the methodology is both necessary and sufficient for the generation of best bet adaptive decisions that we have termed it the Command Methodology.

References
1 2 3 Phillips, L.D. (1984) Decision support for managers, in Otway, H.J. and Peltu, M. (Eds.) The Managerial Challenge of New Office Technology, London, Butterworths. Phillips, L.D. (1987) On the adequacy of judgmental forecasts, in Wright, G. and Ayton, P. (Eds.) Judgmental Forecasting, London, John Wiley & Sons. Phillips, L.D. (1988) Requisite decision modelling for technological projects, in Vlek, C. and Cvetkovich, G. (Eds.) Social Decision Methodology for Technological Projects, North Holland, Elsevier. Phillips, L.D. (1988) People-centred group decision support, in Doukidis, G., Land F. and Miller, G. (Eds.) Knowledge based Management Support Systems, Chichester, Ellis Horwood. Phillips, L.D. (1989) Decision conferences: description, analysis and implications for group decision support, Technical Report No. 89-2 of the Decision Analysis Unit, London School of Economics and Political Science, pp.111. Phillips, L.D. (1984) A theory of requisite decision models, Acta Psychologica, Vol. 56, pp.2948. De Reuck, J, Schmidenberg, O. and Klass, D. (1999) A reconceptualization of decision conferencing: towards a command methodology, International Journal of Technology Management, Vol. 17, Nos.1/2, pp.195107. Hume, D. (1740) A Treatise of Human Nature, (Ed.) Selby-Bigge, L.A. (1978) 2nd Ed with text revised and notes by P.H. Nidditch, Oxford, Clarendon Press. Phillips, L.D. (1979) Introduction to decision analysis, Tutorial Paper 79-1, Decision Analysis Unit, London School of Economics and Political Science. Phillips, L.D. and Phillips, M. (1993) Facilitated work groups: theory and practice, Journal of the Operational Research Society, Vol. 44, No. 6, pp.533549. Barnes, B. (1993), Power, in Bellamy, R. (Ed) Theories and Concepts in Politics: An Introduction, Manchester, Manchester University Press. Lukes, S. (1986) Power, Oxford, Basil Blackwell. Barthes, R., (1973) Mythologies, trans. A. Lavers, London, Paladin Habermas, J. (1987) The Theory of Communicative Action Vol. 2, Lifeworld and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason, Beacon Press: Boston. Hollis, M. (1987) The Cunning of Reason, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Popper, K. (1959) The Logic of Scientific Discovery, London, Hutchinson & Co. Ltd. DAgostino, F. (1989) Adjudication as an epistemological concept, Synthese, Vol. 79, May, pp.23156.

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