Decision-making in management information systems research: The utility of policy capturing methodology

Although decision-making represents a fundamental issue in management information systems (MIS), obtaining accurate assessments of the factors affecting employees' decisions may be difficult using traditional methods such as ratings and rankings. Policy capturing, a little-used method in MIS, represents a potentially important alternative to more traditional methods. After demonstrating that policy capturing has been underutilized in MIS, the paper illustrates the use of policy capturing in two decision-making contexts—computer training and software selection. These two studies contrast policy capturing results with more traditional methods, and draw implications for research.