ABSTRACT
Decisions to study shipping and logistics are not based on perceptions of a few issues standing in isolation, but rather the whole decision situation, influenced by the prior experiences of an individual. This chapter aims to analyse links which individuals make between the hereto isolated issues and items identified as influencing their decisions, and how these links vary between individuals and groups. In doing so, the technique of cognitive mapping is used first to represent, and later to compare individual decisions. This offers a powerful means of structuring and analysing complex decisions, unlikely to be familiar to most managers in shipping and logistics. To assist the layman, the discussion first presents approaches to cognitive mapping as a means of representing knowledge, before building a cognitive map of a decision situation relating to where to run a short course. The scope for using computers in cognitive mapping is then reviewed, before outlining some of the attempts to quantify differences between maps. Next, the methodology used to transform the instrument developed from the focus groups investigating the decision to study International Shipping and Logistics into a cognitive map is described. Examples of the exploratory results obtained from comparing student maps, and the student reactions towards using technological aids in re-running these experiments are discussed. The chapter ends by analysing some of the factors that were found to influence differences between student maps.
