Pages: 56-62
Introduction. When coming about making decisions, individuals endeavour to correctly address issues and to choose the optimum variant among the available ones. Often, the decisional process is made based on the decision-maker philosophy, intuition and/or experience. Depending on the rapidity with which the decision should be made, and on the style of the one adopting it, such process might involve one or many individuals, the latter laying the grounds, via the miscellaneous ideas considered, in providing better results. But in any circumstances, especially in cases where we talk about managerial decisions, if the scientific approach is not effectively involved in the decisional process, the outcomes are less likely to be the most desirable ones.
Aim of the study. Operational research proves to represent, in these circumstances, one of the key instruments in supporting efficient decision-making, it providing the entitled entities with a series of analytical methods and techniques, such as those related to mathematical optimisation, simulations, neural network, game theory and many others, all of them extremely useful for efficiently achieving the established goals.
Keywords: operational research, management science, decision-making instrument, analytical methods, optimisation
JEL Classification: C18, C44, D81
