Validating knowledge: a methodological issue of decision making

How we see decisions has changed significantly over the past few decades. However, what has not changed is that any decision requires knowledge, and this knowledge needs to be validated. In a traditional view, choice is preceded by intelligence and design, more recently, it has been argued that choice is often the first step, followed by intelligence and design to provide an explanation to the stakeholders. We introduce a process of knowledge validation for decision making, useful in both types of decision situations. In this paper we suggest a process of knowledge validation for decision making that comprises three facets: consistency, relevance, and applicability. The increased transparency of the validation process, however, does not enable competitors to copy knowledge, as due to the personal nature of knowledge and decisions only the stakeholders will be able to make sense of the consistent, relevant and applicable knowledge.