Experiences with Decision Conferencing in Hungary

Since 1985, decision-conferencing technology has been successfully transferred to Hungary. Transition to a market-structured economy and a pluralistic political system created a good environment for goal-centered and participative decision support. We summarize the experience of 26 decision conferences supporting organizational decisions in manufacturing companies, service organizations, and governmental authorities. A variety of tools and techniques such as multiattribute utility models and decision trees, assumption surfacing techniques, sociotechniques, and text analytical procedures were applied. In the majority of the cases we evaluated, participants developed innovative solutions which were widely accepted and fully or partially implemented. However, difficulties with using expected utility for rank-ordering alternatives or cost-efficiency as a basis for resource allocation indicate that the application of decision-support techniques is sensitive to idiosyncratic socio-economic factors.