Some aspects of decision making, such as investment, are a familiar part of accounting; other aspects, such as non-economic approaches to pricing and decision analysis are somewhat undeveloped in existing texts. In fact, the divergence of approaches has been such that an accountant would find difficulty in recognizing much of the analysis of decisions by a management scientist or a marketing specialist. This book brings together these disparate strands to present a comprehensive view of the decision making problem. Our special concern has been to apply theory to "reality" without consciously sanitizing the problem. Such should be the mission of any relatively advanced book in this area. As a result, we hope that the messy, conflicting and complex problems encountered in practice have found their way into this text, and that our analysis has, at least, shed some light on the issues behind them. Inevitably our "solutions" are not complete - questions will always remain. To some readers, addicted to a diet of neat problems and right or wrong answers, this approach will be a little difficult at first, but, we trust, interesting and even refreshing. By contrast, we have made every attempt to make our explanations of the various solutions as simple as possible. Formal proofs, mathematical derivations, have been kept to a minimum and, for the most part, set aside in favour of simple examples illustrating the ideas in action.
