We developed a multimethod modeling approach to evaluate strategic alternatives for GM's OnStar communications system. We used dynamic modeling to address some decisions GM faced in 1997, such as the company's choice between incremental and aggressive marketing strategies for OnStar. We used an integrated simulation model for analyzing the new telematics industry, consisting of six sectors: customer acquisition, customer choice, alliances, customer service, financial dynamics, and dealer behavior. The modeling effort had important financial, organizational, and societal results. The OnStar business now has two million subscribers, an 80 percent market share of the emerging telematics market, and has been valued at between $4 and $10 billion. The OnStar project set the stage for a broader GM initiative in service businesses that ultimately could yield billions in incremental earnings. Most important, OnStar has saved many lives that otherwise would have been lost in vehicle accidents.

This paper presents a new framework for handling ill-structured decision problems. The framework derives from recent developments in the logic of argumentation. It shows how policy statements may under certain conditions be construed as the outcome of a complex process of argumentation. The framework is especially suited to ill-structured decision problems since it is capable of handling explicit contradictions and missing parts in an argument structure. It is also shown by means of a new concept—plausibility—how it is possible to locate the weakest links in a complex argument. A major consequence of the concept of plausibility is that it is possible under certain conditions to transform a problem in the logic of argumentation (i.e., symbolic logic) into one of algebra (i.e., linear programming).

The authors argue that consultants can be divided into two types: self-promoting gurus and educators. According to this typology, the gurus who promote their proprietary solution as a fix for all problems instead of trying to increase managerial understanding of a particular corporate puzzle do not really educate their clients. Instead, they promote maxims and slogans that define prescriptions for management, but do not increase the competence of managers. Because they take research short-cuts in the process of developing and testing their theories, a significant proportion of the advice produced by such management gurus is either incorrectly inferred from data (but nevertheless, may be true) or is unsubstantiated by genuine evidence. Examples are drawn from the best selling books of Tom Peters, Stephen R. Covey, Arie de Geus, and Gary Hamel. Recommendations for providing management with defensive measures include: requiring greater evidence of the effectiveness of advice; recognition that flawed research techniques produces flawed evidence; recognition that many seemingly wise maxims are really platitudes; effective selection and use of internal and external consultants who perceive their mission to be the individualized education of managers and the solution of their organization's particular problems.Over the past two decades theorists have unveiled a succession of ideas, christened with some acronym and tarted up in scientific language, which are supposed to``guarantee competitive success.'' A few months later, with the ideas tried out and``competitive success'' still as illusory as ever, another theorist announces the publication of a new book based on some new proprietary concept. The names speak for themselves: theory Z, management by objectives, brainstorming, managerial grid, T groups, intrapreneurship, demassing, excellence, managing by walking around, and so on [1].