The Fairfax experience: using issue exploration to avoid errors of the third kind

Issue exploration is used as a preliminary phase in strategic decision making. It performs the function of allowing strategic decision makers to encounter new information, learn from it, and use it to help them sort the strategic problems from the non-strategic problems. The function of issue exploration effort is to focus strategic resources on the strategic problems and to avoid solving the non-strategic ones. In statistics, solving the wrong problem is considered as making an Error of the Third Kind. For strategic decision makers, solving non-strategic problems can also be considered as making an Error of the Third Kind. An "Organizational Disposition For Change Framework" was developed to research the exploration behavior of thirty strategic decision-making management initiative:s for information technology development in Fairfax County, Virginia. The results supported the hypothesis that strategic decision-making initiatives that included exploration behavior significantly outperform those initiatives that did not.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph. D.

Level thesis:degree_level

doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Public Administration and Public Affairs

Department dc:contributor.department

Public Administration and Public Affairs

Grantor dc:publisher

Virginia Tech

Year dc:date.issued

1992

Author dc:creator

• Bruce, Raymon R.

Chair dc:contributor.committeechair

• Kronenberg, Philip S.

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Dickey, John W.
• Wamsley, Gary L.
• Perkins, Richard F.
• Wolf, James F.

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Language dc:language.iso

en

Dc Identifier Other

etd-08032007-142131

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/39034