[Sample B: Approval/Signature Sheet] - George Mason University

objective need to be identified during the interviews with DMs and the analysis of the
gold standard documents.
Next, similar ideas should be aggregated in order to ―organize and summarize
natural groupings among them to understand the essence of the problem.‖ 41 Such
aggregation should form a ―complete, non-redundant, and independent set‖ 42 , in other
words, should be mutually exclusive and collective exhaustive. The final output should
be the identification of the fundamental objectives considered to be relevant to the
decision context.
It is important to emphasize the difference between fundamental objectives and
means objectives. The former represent the essential reasons for interest in the decision
situation and they are structured in a fundamental objectives network, while the latter are
important because of their implications for some other objective and are structured in a
means-ends network.
This concept is explained by Keeney:
in a fundamental objectives hierarchy the lower level objectives under any higherlevel
objective are the answer to the question ―What aspects of the higher-level
objective are important?‖…In a means-ends objectives network, the lower-level
objectives under any higher-level objective are the answer to the question ―How
can the higher-level objective be better achieved?‖ 43
In a mean-ends network, the lower-level objective is a means to the higher-level
objective, showing causal relationship. Also, the means objectives are ―not a collective
41
Michael Brassard and Diane Ritter, The Memory Jogger 2: Tools for Continuous Improvement and
Effective Planning, 2nd ed. (Goal/QPC, 2010), 12.
42
G. S. Parnell et al., ―Foundations 2025: A Value Model for Evaluating Future Air and Space Forces,‖
Management Science 44, no. 10 (10, 1998): 1339.
43 Keeney, Value-Focused Thinking, 71.
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