Abstract:The integrated use of Scenario Planning and Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) has been advocated as a powerful combination for providing decision support in strategic decisions. Scenario Planning helps decision makers in devising strategies and thinking about possible future scenarios; while MCDA can support an indepth performance evaluation of each strategy, as well as in the design of more robust and better options. One of the frameworks proposed recently, by Goodwin & Wright, suggests the use of scenario planning with multi-attribute value theory, a mathematically simple, yet extensively researched and widely employed multi-criteria method.However, so far, such framework has been presented only using hypothetical problems. In this paper we describe two case-studies where this approach was used to support real-world strategic decisions. We discuss the challenges and limitations we encountered in applying it; and suggest some possible improvements that could be made to such framework.Key-words: scenario planning, multi-criteria decision analysis, strategic decision making, risk and uncertainty." [Under uncertainty] there is no scientific basis on which to form any calculable probability whatever. We simply do not know. Nevertheless, the necessity for action and for decision compels us as practical men to do our best to overlook this awkward fact (…)." John Maynard Keynes (1937)

In the context of strategic management, strategic choice and determinism are presented as two distinct planning approaches. When treated as two distinct variables, they are responsible for the creation of a framework of analysis, in which it is possible to identify the four different human agency philosophical ontological perspectives, of determinism, hard incompatibilism, libertarianism and compatibilism, each perspective characterized by different amounts of strategic choice and determinism. By drawing on the theoretical context of the aforementioned perspectives, we provide empirical evidence of their real-life existence. The strategic framework not only reduces theoretical fragmentation, but also provides a link between the philosophical debate on free will/determinism and strategic management and can help to reduce uncertainty in planning.