Renewing Strategic Decision-Making Aids.

There is a need to readjust the theoretical and methodological framework for analyzes of strategic decisions in farms, due to changes in the conditions in which actors have to make their decisions. This paper presents some results of research into decision-making processes in French farms and shows the limits of normative models that focus on solving problems of choice. The authors emphasize the relevance of tools that give a greater place to learning processes and that enable actors to become involved with and to reason out their own strategic rules. The paper shows, on the basis of two examples, that research in the field of artificial intelligence offers interesting techniques to construct such aids for strategic decision-making. Copyright 1991 by Oxford University Press.