Decision theory is a comprehensive discipline aimed at developing methods and tools to help one or more persons make a justified choice of the best available alternative.
Decision-making in a professional sense is a special type of human activity that involves the justified selection of the best (in some sense) alternative or several preferred alternatives from the available options. The need to justify a choice is present in all spheres of human activity. Justified choice is particularly important in the management of organizational and technical systems.
The study of how people make decisions and the creation of choice methods are the concern of many scientific disciplines that arose and historically developed independently of one another. These include decision theory, systems analysis, operations research, statistical decision theory, game theory, optimal control theory, economic cybernetics, organization theory, information science, artificial intelligence, cognitive psychology, behavioral theory, and others. These disciplines analyze the mechanisms, processes, and rules of choice from different perspectives, as applied to objects of various kinds and under various conditions of their existence. Together they form a multidisciplinary science that helps people make justified choices.
Decision theory as an independent field of study began to take shape in the mid-twentieth century, drawing on systems analysis methodology. The primary purpose of decision theory is to develop methods and tools that allow an individual or a group of persons to formulate the set of possible solutions to a problem, compare them with one another, find among them the best or acceptable alternatives that satisfy certain requirements (constraints), and, when necessary, explain the choice made.
Decision theory can provide substantial assistance in analyzing and solving complex problems, but only when its methods and tools are used appropriately, within their limits, neither overstating nor understating their role in the process of finding a solution. Therefore, decision theory is best understood as the search for and justification of the alternatives most preferred by the decision-maker.