Decision Making at the Executive Level The focus of my term paper is the decision making process used by today's top-level managers. Top-level managers, such as Chief Executive Officers (CEOs), Chief Operations Officers (COOs), and Chief Financial Officers (CFOs), must make critical decisions on a daily basis. Their choices and the resulting outcomes affect the company, the employees, and the stakeholders. Due to the high importance of their decisions, the process they use to reach them merits a close examination. A study published in the winter 1997 volume of Business Strategy Review suggests the major factor in a decisions success is the decision process itself. The study, by Paul Nutt, suggests that poor decision making …show more content…
The study divided this task into four different areas. The first area, labeled concept tactic, used a solution to a problem to guide the decision. The second, problem solving, uses an existing problem to direct the decision. The third area, objective setting, uses a preferred performance level to decide the course to follow. The last area, reframing, uses benchmarking to prove that a decision must be made. The last area was implemented more times in the study than the others. I believe that this is because competition is very fierce, and executives often feel that they must keep ahead of others in their industry. By comparing themselves to others of equal size and direction, companies must act fast if they want to keep their competitive advantage. The next step in the decision making process is to identify the alternatives. According to the author of the study, there are three ways to generate options; by copying, searching, or designing. The first way is to adapt an existing option to fit the need. The second way, searching, is to find a company that has a prepackaged solution to achieve the goals. The last way, designing, employs consultants to design a solution. The two most successful ways were copying and searching. I believe this is because the third option requires the company to attempt to explain to the consulting group exactly what
Management decisions and control are the focus of the chapter. The first concept was decision making, which simply is the process of choosing a course of action regarding the business. In the book, we are shown a 9 stage process which entailed problem perception, problem identification, problem formulation, search for alternatives, evaluation of alternatives, choice of alternatives, start of operation, implementation and control. Last summer when I interned with the Golden State Warriors there was a person whose designated job was to make decisions on what the office was going to have for lunch; and at the same time there was the CFO who sat with teams everyday making decision regarding the teams move from Oakland to San Francisco and used
Garvin, David, and Roberto, Michael. What You Don’t Know About Making Decisions. N.p.: Harvard Business Review, n.d. Pdf
There are a number of tools that can be used when establishing options. They include means end, trial and error that are systematic, proximity searching, knowledge based, and fractional method (Creducation.org, n.d.). Means end assist with selecting the suitable stakeholders and actions needed to help with changing the problem and become closer to reaching the intended goal. By using trial and error method, then the path chosen that doesn’t work is removed. The proximity search method helps by looking one step ahead of what is needed to become that much closer to achieving the goal. When using the knowledge base method,
Bazerman, M. (2006). Judgment in Managerial Decision Making (6th ed). John Wiley & Sons. Hoboken, New Jersey
Decision making is one of the most vital tasks that an entrepreneur, company, or managers are often called to make in order to alter the cause of a business venture or influence the course a business will take. Decision analysis thus entails the discipline of appraising intricate alternatives with regard to values and uncertainty. Value, in most incidences, is expressed monetarily and is a major management concern. Additionally, decision analysis offers awareness into how distinct alternatives vary from each other as it offers propositions for new and improved alternatives. Decision making is a process which involves a methodical review of various pathways that the being made will result in while allowing the persons making the decisions to explore various outcomes for their decisions. Various methods are thus employed in decision making (Figueira, et al., (2005). This manuscript appraises some of these methods and offers the best approach in making decisions for a business. Various peer reviewed articles and printed texts are inferred upon in the analysis of the subject under review. The theoretical framework with regard to decision analysis is also appraised.
In any organization, decision making serves as a factor which could either break it or make it. Hence, it is important that sound decisions are made so that the goals of a certain organization or company are realized. Aside from that, profits and productivity are expected to increase if decisions are able to meet the demands of business trends. In traditional organizational structures, decisions are lodged in the topmost stages of the ladder. In other words, only the top executives make the decisions for the company’s future and direction. In some instances, only the chief executive officer will only decide for the company. As a
Decision-making is the act of choosing one alternative from among the set of alternatives. The decision-making process is recognising and defining the nature of decision situation, identifying alternatives, choosing the best alternative, and putting it into practice. (Griffin R, 2012). Decision making process also helps businesses allocate scarce resources by individuals or groups to achieve goals under conditions of uncertainty and risk. Sometimes, groups choose better decisions than individuals. It is important to realise that effectiveness of decision is different than ease of decision. Once goal has been established, managers could adopt the classical model or the rational decision making model. There is also a risk of uncertainty which states that the manager does not know all the possible alternatives and their possible consequences. In this issue, rational decision making is used.
In every corporation the crux of a manager’s charisma is his decision making prowess. Though there is an abundance of scientific theories and myths related to decision making, generally decisions are made in a highly rationalized context.
Decisions may be a simple as determining who on your team goes to lunch at what time or can be as complex as developing a new marketing strategy. With each decision comes some level of risk, small or great, that may ultimately affect your bottom line.
The dilemma of the case illustrates the power and importance of a good and strategic decision-making process of companies in how to manage its operations, how to deal with customers and stakeholders, and what is the desired impact it wants to
Everything you do is a choice. You choose the way you are living today. As we walk on the path of life, we are presented with cross roads and forks. Some are pretty obvious which turn we should take. However, not everything is easy in life. And in the fast pace life we are currently living in right now, we move so fast that we meet many more challenges than before and often, we hastily decide on the choices we make.
Now a day’s making management decisions has become more and more difficult, they need to be made more and more quickly; have to be made in increasingly complex and unpredictable situations.
The purpose of this memo is to discuss our analysis of your proposal and the decision making process we as a team discussed along with the future changes Novel Idea will be making. Firing one of the managers and hiring more part-time workers might increase our profits. However, not understanding the negative implications that might have could stand to severely decrease profits. Therefore, we will need to take a closer look at concerns you might be facing, employees, local officials, and ethical principles that are relevant to make the final decision that will benefit most stakeholders while minimizing the potential damage for some stakeholders.
Decision making can be defined as a mental process of making choices among possible alternatives to make a practical decision (Reason, 1990; Wang, 2000). From selecting what items to buy in a supermarket to deciding which television channel to watch, we often have to make decisions in different conditions, particularly when we are facing uncertainties and trade-offs. Admittedly, decision-making skills have become increasing important when it comes to the highly competitive and ever changing business world. In view of that, a variety of models have been developed by the scholars from all around the world in an attempt to conceptualise the decision making process and maximise its potential output. In this paper, we will look at the role of
Decision making is an important aspect of what keeps organizations afloat. One decision can often ripple into the future and cause problems. An example of this is when a manufacturing company chooses to make use of cheaper parts so that they can increase their profit margin. The decision may benefit them in the short term, but the effect in the future can be devastating the company. Clients will notice the lackluster quality of the products that they purchase from the company and complain, or worse, no longer choose to do business with the company. Far too often, decisions in organizations are made based on the money that it will bring in, or the benefits that it will bring. However, to be truly successful, decisions must not just be made from a financial standpoint. This is a concept that will be explored in this paper, where we will make use of a hypothetical situation and make use of the lessons we learned from decision making. In the end, we will provide a final decision addressing the situation.