USING VALUE-FOCUSED THINKING IN AN INTEGRATED PROCESS TO SUPPORT DECISIONS

Abstract

This work presents an integrated decision support process based on Value-Focused Thinking (VFT) applicable to personal and organizational decisions. There are three main goals of this research: (i) present a methodological discussion on Value-Focused Thinking (VFT) and depict how it can contribute to support decision processes; (ii) present an integrated guide for a decision-support process based on VFT to help analysts and decision-makers in conducting decision processes; (iii) present applications of the proposed approach in a personal and a public management problem. This work delivers two main contri-butions: (a) a unified process that integrates different approaches based on VFT with a consistent structure for sequencing the stages of the decision-making process; and (b) examples that demonstrate the use of the proposed process in real problems and different contexts, presenting insights not thoroughly explored in the literature.