In this course, we explore the use of analytical methods in management problem-solving and highlight organizational and contextual issues. We study how to construct an analytical model of a problem that can be manipulated or solved to identify a decision that yields the best outcome, according to one or more carefully defined criteria. The challenges of selling and implementing model results in an organizational context will be explored through mini-cases and illustrations. We study both deterministic models ¿ those that assume that the variables and outcomes in a decision problem are known with certainty ¿ and stochastic models, which introduce elements of uncertainty or risk. We will examine examples of models of each type that are used in current practice.