Three Roads to Commitment: A Trimodal Theory of Decision Making

Three Roads to Commitment: A Trimodal Theory of Decision Making 25
Scheduling (Figure 3, right column) is necessary when several time and resource-consuming tasks must be
accomplished within a restricted window of time with limited resources. Although the tasks themselves are afforded
by standard practices, according to Orasanu & Fischer, the actual implementation of them in combination with one
another and under time pressure is unfamiliar; there are no rules or standard procedures for determining which are
most important, when to do them, and by whom. From TDM’s point of view, both scheduling and procedural
management require multiple decision cycles, In procedural management, these cycles focus on particularizing the
rule to a specific situation; in scheduling, the cycles focus on extending the temporal scope of the plan. Another
important difference is that procedural management (as we interpret it) permits commitments to be fleshed out in the
course of implementation, as in hedge clipping (Figure 3, middle column). Scheduling requires planning before
implementation to resolve potential conflicts, e.g., in resource demands and temporal relationships, as in tree felling.
Figure 3 (right column) illustrates scheduling as a mix of matching and choice decisions accomplished over a series
of cycles that must be completed before action begins. In this example, the initial cycle of matching (1a) turns up
more than one candidate for the first time slot (1b, broken line), leading to choice (2a). Once a selection is made
(2b), it becomes a part of the plan (3a). Continued processing (3b), e.g., for the next time slot, produces another
cycle of matching (4a), which this time lead directly to a single option (4b), adding B as the next element (5a). The
plan is now to perform A followed by B, i.e., A—B. Reassessment of this plan (5a) discovers, however, that they
cannot both be performed without advance preparatory effort, leading to plan rejection and a return to matching
(e.g., to insert a preparatory action before A, or to drop either A or B or both). Reassessment can revisit and revise
earlier commitments at any time in this process, in order to resolve resource conflicts, satisfy sequential constraints,
or meet time deadlines. This process continues until the plan is complete; only then does implementation begin.
When Things Go Wrong
The diagrams in Figure 1 and Figure 2 did not show what happens when decision makers encounter obstacles in
the decision maker. TDM describes the initial commitment state in both cases as null commitment, because they
both require at least one decision cycle to generate an action. TDM thus separates action uncertainty, which varies in
quantity, from decision mode. A similar difference emerges in the characterization of choice. According to Orasanu
& Fischer, multiple options are afforded because no rule determines the tradeoff that should be made among
competing goals. But such a rule could be constructed, based on boundedly rational choice heuristics or decision
analysis plus an airline or FAA specified importance ranking; in the case of boundedly rational heuristics, such a
rule might be applied very quickly and intuitively. TDM would still regard the decision as a choice because the
initial state of commitment was disjunctive and tradeoffs are present, even if the rule makes the decision easy.