Innovative Expert Methods in Strategic Decision Making

Purpose: This study introduces managerial techniques applied for the first time in the high-level strategic public policy decision-making process in Slovakia with an aim to assess the strategic decision-making of groups of experts in a methodologically supported environment. It compares groups of internal analysts and external specialists and should demonstrate the extent to which these two groups are able to process problems analytically and suppress intuition. Methodology/Approach: Multi-criteria decision methods are used when deciding on complex problems. One of the most popular and most frequently used is the Analytic Hierarchy Process. Application of this method enables measurement of preference consistency, and its relationship with cognitive reflection. Findings: Consistency of judgement was very similar in both groups. The prioritisation of measures resulted in a similar set of priorities determined by both groups. The assumed relationship of consistency and cognitive reflection score and/or overconfidence was not detected, and decision makers proved to be well calibrated. Research Limitation/Implication: The main limitation of our research was the small sample size of decision makers, which complied with the requirements of the decision method, but was not sufficient to confirm the statistical validity. Originality/Value of paper: The introduction of the multi-criteria decision method into decision-making for public policy strategies combines practical policy exercises with scientific research on high-stakes decisions and enables to carry out participatory decision-making process with relevant stakeholders

Identifying major policy challenges and policy interventions via expert methods

This paper presents the application of expert decision methods for the formulation and prioritization of the long-term economic, social and environmental policies in the Slovak Republic. The Partnership Agreement for the Slovak Republic (PA) is an underlying strategy for investments from the European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF) in the period 2021-2027. Policies implemented under the PA will allocate €13.4b on four policy objectives. This paper concentrates on the policy objective 4 ‘Social development’. The authors co-operated with the Deputy Prime Minister Office and assembled panels of top Slovak experts on social and economic issues. The Delphi and Analytical hierarchy process (AHP) methods were combined for analyzing major development challenges and eliciting policy priorities. The methods combined the bottom-up and top-down approaches to policy making. Nine potential policy measures in three policy areas emerged from the Delphi exercise. The AHP exercise applied three criteria (relevance, urgency and feasibility) to rank the abovementioned measures within three policy areas. As for the Policy Area 1 (Labour market, employment, training and institutions) the measure 4.1.1 ‘Improving access to employment and modernizing institutions and services on labour market’ clearly dominated over the measure 4.1.2 ‘Supporting a better work-life balance’. The measure 4.2.2 ‘Equal access to quality and inclusive education’ emerged substantially more important than measures 4.2.1 ‘Improving the quality and effectiveness of education and training systems’ and 4.2.3 ‘Support to life-long learning’ in the Policy Area 2 ‘Education and skills’. Finally, measures 4.3.2 ‘Supporting social and economic integration of marginalized Roma communities’ and 4.3.3 ‘Ensuring equal access to healthcare including primary care’ received the highest ranks in the Policy Area 3 ‘Health and social services’