decision making

process of deciding or settling something

Decision making is the cognitive process leading to the selection of a course of action among  variations. Every decision making process produces a final choice. It can be an action or an opinion. It begins when we need to do something but know not what. Therefore, decision making is a reasoning process which can be rational or irrational, can be based on explicit assumptions or tacit assumptions.
See more at Wikipedia.org...

Decision a choice between a number of possible answers to a question. decision analysis a systematic approach to decision making under conditions of [more]Decision making - Community and Resources

Noun
1. the cognitive process of reaching a decision; "a good executive must be good at decision making"
(synonym) deciding
(hypernym) higher cognitive process
(hyponym) umpirage, officiation, officiating, refereeing

choosing between alternative courses of action using cognitive processes - memory, thinking, evaluation, etc; also called Problem Solving.