Induction, Deduction and the Pig Headed Decision Maker: Why we Should Learn to Love Them All

This paper examines the state of mind of a decision-maker who is at the point of commissioning commercial research, and the thought processes that create that state of mind. Commercial decision-makers that commission research have a huge influence on whether it is effective or not. This influence, benign or otherwise, depends very much on how the decision-maker approaches a commissioned piece of research, and how the researcher handles them. The paper argues that decision makers are highly committed to one course of action by the time that they commission research. This commitment, or pig-headedness is not a feature of the decision makers' personality, but is an inevitable outcome of the interplay between deductive and inductive theory testing, which forms part of a structured process of theory testing that invariably precedes the decision to commission research. The paper argues that if researchers do not understand the origins of this commitment, and do not react to it in an appropriate manner, then the research that they undertake will be ignored as the decision that it was meant to support is being taken, thereby rendering the research ineffective.