Dealing with uncertainty in decision-making and strategic risk management in economics

• Autor: Salinas Ortiz, José
• Formato: artículo
• Fecha de Publicación: 2025
• Institución: Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería
• Repositorio: Revistas - Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería
• Lenguaje: español
• OAI Identifier: oai:oai:revistas.uni.edu.pe:article/2684
• Enlace del recurso: https://revistas.uni.edu.pe/index.php/iecos/article/view/2684
• Nivel de acceso: acceso abierto
• Materia: Incertidumbre; probabilidades; espera; toma de decisiones; riesgo estratégicos; Uncertainty; probabilities; waiting; decision making; strategic risk

In highly uncertain strategic contexts, such as those caused by climate change, technological disruption, or social and economic changes, business decision-making faces challenges that traditional approaches fail to adequately address. This article examines and compares two approaches to decision-making and risk management: the traditional approach—based on deterministic analysis and risk penalization through high discount rates—and the discipline of Decision Analysis (DA), developed by Ronald Howard at Stanford. While the traditional approach tends to assume a single projected future, ignoring or simplifying uncertainty, AD provides a structured methodology for modeling multiple possible futures, quantifying risks, and analytically separating the time value of money from uncertainty. A case study—the Minoro mining investment project—demonstrates how AD not only allows for understanding risk, but also for proactively managing it and significantly improving the quality of the decision. The paper concludes that the use of AD provides rigor, clarity, and strategic value in decision-making under uncertainty, recommending its adoption in organizations seeking to be resilient and future-oriented.