Guide to Decision Governance in Organizations

This concise guidebook examines decision governance, defined as the system of values, principles, practices, and processes that shape how decisions are made and justified. In particular, it explains how decision governance can be designed, diagnosed, and changed to enable better decisions. The book examines how organizations assign authority, structure participation, select information, apply criteria, and assess outcomes across different decision settings. Drawing on examples from firms, public administration, regulation, and politics, the book shows how weak governance produces inconsistency, loss of trust, and failure, and how stronger governance improves coordination, accountability, learning, and performance. Its aim is to provide a framework for understanding existing decision arrangements, diagnosing their limits, and designing changes that enable decisions to be made and revised more effectively. Topics and features: · Treats decision governance as a design problem, showing how governance can be changed to improve decision quality · Explains how to diagnose existing decision processes and practices, identify weaknesses, and design changes that produce better outcomes · Brings together relevant research from economics, psychology, organization theory, systems thinking, operations research, ethics, political science, and sociology · Connects theory to applications by examining case studies that demonstrate what affects decisions in practice · Integrates behavioral, structural, computational, normative, and cultural perspectives as complementary tools for governance design The book is ideal for senior managers, board members, investors, policymakers, regulators, consultants, and researchers who need to understand how authority, information, participation, and accountability affect decision outcomes. It will also be relevant to professionals responsible for redesigning decision processes in firms, governments, and international organizations.