An investigation into the effects of environmental changes on industrial decision-making and the application of criteria derived therefrom to the British machine tool industry

When pressures act on decision-making systems, they generally react by realigning, restructuring or reorganizing within their systems to withstand and overcome these pressures. These pressures stem from changes in the environment of the decision-making systems. Companies and industrial systems operate in a dynamic environment which means that they are almost always under pressure. The realignment or readjustment within the systems against pressure situations are made by executives in the company system. They try to monitor these environmental tendencies or anticipate changes and make their systems adaptive to the pressure situations by making decisions on every facet of the business which is likely to be affected. Every one of these decisions they make are subject to uncertainty, some more so than others. Two decisions which have a greater degree of uncertainty are: (a) financial decision; and (b) the technological decision. [Continues.]