Decisions in Context™
Decisions in Context explores how people, evidence, systems, and circumstances shape consequential decisions—and how Applied Decision Ecology can help improve them.
Important decisions rarely happen in isolation. They emerge from interactions among people, information, incentives, relationships, technologies, organizations, and the environments surrounding them.
This publication examines those interactions through research, real-world cases, current events, organizational experience, and practical decision lessons. The goal is not to pretend complexity can be eliminated. It is to understand it well enough to make better decisions within it.
Decisions in Context is an Orblytics™ publication advancing the study and practice of Applied Decision Ecology.
Why subscribe?
Subscribe if you are interested in how consequential decisions are actually made—not merely what people ultimately chose.
Each issue examines decisions through the conditions surrounding them: what was known, what remained uncertain, who was involved, how incentives and relationships mattered, what trade-offs were unavoidable, and what happened afterward.
Readers can expect research-informed analysis that is rigorous enough to be useful to professionals while remaining accessible to anyone interested in making and understanding better decisions.
Subscribe to receive new Decisions in Context articles directly by email and access the publication archive.
Stay up-to-date
New articles will examine topics across leadership, organizations, healthcare, AI and technology, human behavior, public systems, and everyday decision-making.
Some issues will analyze a particular decision. Others will translate research, develop Applied Decision Ecology, examine recurring decision patterns, or draw lessons from conversations with leaders and organization members.
The common question is always:
What changes when we understand the decision in context?
Join the conversation
Decisions improve when ideas can be examined, challenged, refined, and connected to experience.
Subscribers are invited to contribute thoughtful questions, examples, applications, and respectful counterpoints in the comments. Agreement is not required; useful conversation is.
Over time, I hope Decisions in Context™ becomes more than a collection of articles. It can become a community interested in understanding how decisions emerge—and in improving the conditions from which better decisions can emerge.
About Applied Decision Ecology
Decision Ecology examines how decisions emerge from the interactions among people, evidence, relationships, incentives, technologies, institutions, and the broader systems and contexts in which choices are made.
Applied Decision Ecology takes that understanding into real-world decisions, situations, and decision-producing systems. It is a developing interdisciplinary framework and practice for diagnosing and improving the conditions through which consequential decisions are made, implemented, and learned from.
It draws on decision science, systems thinking, behavioral science, Strategic Management Theory, Stakeholder Theory, Social Interdependence Theory, Human Relations Theory, analytics, evaluation, and responsible uses of AI.
Its underlying premise is straightforward:
Decisions are shaped by more than the person making them.
Better decisions depend on the interaction among evidence, people, strategy, relationships, incentives, technologies, institutions, context, and feedback.
About Orblytics™
Orblytics helps organizations make better decisions when evidence is incomplete, human judgment is bounded, systems are complex, and consequences matter.
Through decision science, analytics, AI, systems thinking, and Applied Decision Ecology, Orblytics helps organizations understand the full picture, identify what matters, and translate insight into action.
Better Decisions Emerge.
About Matt Munyon
Matthew D. Munyon, Ph.D. is the founder of Orblytics and serves as Chief Decision Scientist and Chief Peace Officer.
His work integrates systems thinking, decision science, behavioral science, analytics, evaluation, AI, strategic management, and organizational leadership. He has approached organizations as interconnected human systems throughout his academic and professional career and is developing Applied Decision Ecology as a framework for understanding and improving consequential decisions in context.
A central idea in his work is that better decisions can create greater peace by reducing avoidable uncertainty, conflict, friction, and disorder—and that greater peace, in turn, can create the conditions for clearer judgment and better decisions. He views this as a reinforcing cycle: better decisions can create conditions for greater peace, and greater peace can create conditions for better decisions—supporting both performance and well-being.
