can or should farmers decision making methods be improved ?
When DSS were first applied, there was little doubt that it would be an improvement for managers to formalise decision making processes, this is summarised by Carroll and Johnson’s (1990) statement that because decision-makers were “prone to error, behave inconsistently, and may not realise when their decisions are of better or worse quality, they could use some help”. Hammond (1996) argued that the ability to show consistent mistakes in human information processing and thinking from research starting in the 1950s (eg Kahneman and Tvesrsky) was a challenge to a previous notion of educated human managers as ideal decision makers. Hammond maintains that the pessimistic view of humans as cognitive cripples dominated thinking from 1970s to 1990s – a crucial stage for DSS development. A more optimistic view of human judgement is based partly on showing that some of the consistent mistakes might be parlour games and can be overcome when the question is reworded. More significantly, the slowe
