ABSTRACT
At the outset of this book, we introduced a variety of questions: How do decisionmakers in complex task environments approach difficult and not-so-difficult judgmental decisions? What is the role of experience as well as differing degrees of situational complexity? What has all this to do with decision quality and the ability of employees in complex environments to successfully handle their oftentimes dangerous and almost always important tasks? How are decisions shaped by organizational structures? We took an in-depth look at the current state of knowledge regarding these questions in Chapter 2, which helped us understand the advantages and disadvantages of the different decision modes. However, we saw that previous research left a variety of gaps in our understanding of decision modes in complex task environments unaddressed. We then provided empirical evidence to answer those questions in Chapters 3 through 5. Now, it is time to summarize what we have learned and provide answers to these central questions that inspired us to conduct our research and, in the end, write this book.
