ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of the mechanics of extracting decision-guiding evidence out of available information, focusing on applicable academic and applied research, industry norms and best practices, and tacit professional knowledge. In fact, one avenue of decision-guiding insight extraction that might be more foreboding than the task of translating operational data into meaningful insights is the task of identifying, pooling, and synthesizing findings of empirical research studies. The resultant research review conclusions’ validity and reliability gains offer a worthwhile payoff from the standpoint of theoretical knowledge development, but can rarely be justified by a practitioner operating within comparatively short decision timelines. The organizational decision-making context suggests a rather obvious solution to the vexing problem of knowing which hunches should be trusted: seek and jointly consider intuitive conjectures from multiple individuals. Within the confines of expert judgment, where multiple individuals might be asked to provide their forecasts or other expertise-derived inputs, it critical to assure interpretational uniformity of stated questions.
