{
  "title": "Evaluating a decision: what the outcome alone cannot establish",
  "url": "https://www.shr.swiss/blog/evaluer-une-decision-sans-confondre-qualite-et-resultat-en",
  "language": "en",
  "datePublished": "2026-07-16",
  "publisher": {
    "name": "SHR — Swiss Human Resources",
    "url": "https://www.shr.swiss",
    "address": "Esplanade de Pont-Rouge 9A, 1212 Lancy, Suisse"
  },
  "summary": "A decision that turns out well is not necessarily a well-founded decision. Research suggests distinguishing what the manager could have known from what the organisation knows afterwards.",
  "section": "Research",
  "topic": "Decision-making",
  "place": {
    "name": "Lugano",
    "region": "Tessin",
    "country": "CH"
  },
  "keyPoints": [
    {
      "heading": "What the literature establishes",
      "point": "Jonathan Baron and John C."
    },
    {
      "heading": "The mechanism that reconstructs the past",
      "point": "Baruch Fischhoff (1975, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance) showed that knowing an outcome retrospectively changes the probability people assign to it."
    },
    {
      "heading": "The premature conclusion",
      "point": "One might conclude that decisions should be evaluated without considering their consequences."
    },
    {
      "heading": "What these findings do not allow us to promise",
      "point": "These experiments establish effects in controlled tasks; they do not directly measure their magnitude in Lugano businesses."
    },
    {
      "heading": "A practical check in Lugano",
      "point": "Within SHR's [decision-making](/formation/prise-de-decision/lugano) programme, one possible exercise is to document a category of recurring choices before commitment: bank lending, fashion assortments, trading purchases or investments in an Italian-speaking family SME."
    }
  ],
  "sources": [
    {
      "authors": "Hershey",
      "year": "1988",
      "source": "Journal of Personality and Social Psychology"
    },
    {
      "authors": "Fischhoff",
      "year": "1975",
      "source": "Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance"
    }
  ],
  "wordCount": 405,
  "image": "https://www.shr.swiss/img/blog-editorial-2026-07-16-en.jpg?v=4",
  "translations": {
    "fr": "https://www.shr.swiss/blog/evaluer-une-decision-sans-confondre-qualite-et-resultat",
    "en": "https://www.shr.swiss/blog/evaluer-une-decision-sans-confondre-qualite-et-resultat-en",
    "de": "https://www.shr.swiss/blog/evaluer-une-decision-sans-confondre-qualite-et-resultat-de",
    "it": "https://www.shr.swiss/blog/evaluer-une-decision-sans-confondre-qualite-et-resultat-it"
  },
  "relatedPages": {
    "programme": "https://www.shr.swiss/formation/prise-de-decision/lugano",
    "city": "https://www.shr.swiss/formations-ville/lugano",
    "blog": "https://www.shr.swiss/blog"
  },
  "citationPolicy": "Citation autorisée avec mention « SHR — Swiss Human Resources » et lien vers l'article."
}