Adversarial Decision Making: Benefits or Losses

A substantial body of work has been performed developing models for decision making under adversarial conditions. To date however, little attention has been paid to the underlying motivation of the decision makers or how the decision process actually functions in the corporate environment when adversarial relationships exist between departments. In this paper adversarial decisions are analyzed using Allison's conceptual framework, strategic assumption surfacing and testing (SAST), and agency theory. The performance of the SAST method is found to be linked to the descriptive model that best represents the decision making process and whether the analyst subscribes to agency theory as a valid motivator for individual decisions within the organization.