Decision Making in

Management
What is Decision Making?

• Decision making is the cognitive process leading to the selection of a course of

action among alternatives.
• 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 we do not know what. Therefore,
decision making is a reasoning process which can be rational or irrational, and can
be based on explicit assumptions or tacit assumptions.
• Examples:
Shopping, deciding what to eat, What to wear, when to sleep, etc..
Definition
The process of examining your possibilities options, comparing
them, and choosing a course of action.
Related Quotes
“Be sure you are right -- then go ahead.”
Davy Crocket.
“Doing what's right isn't hard -- Knowing what's right is.”
Lyndon B. Johnson.
“Mine own applause is the only applause which matters.”
Cicero.
“Once you've made your mark, watch out for erasers!”
Will Rogers.
Making Effective Decisions

Factors:

g Perception. g Goals.
g Priority. g Values.
g Acceptability. g Demands.
g Risk. g Style.
g Resources. g Judgement.
Barriers to Good Decision Making
• Hasty - Making quick decisions without having much thought.
• Narrow - Decision making is based on very limited information.
• Scattered - Our thoughts in making decisions are disconnected or
disorganized.
• Fuzzy - Sometimes, the lack of clarity on important aspects of a
decision causes us to overlook certain important considerations.
Decision Making Process
Steps
1. Define the decision clearly.
2. Consider all the possible choices.
3. Gather all relevant information and
evaluate all the pros and cons of each
possible choice.
4. Select the choice that seems to best meet
the needs of the situation.
5. Implement a plan of action and then
monitor the results, making necessary
adjustments.
Tips
• A lot of decision making goes wrong at the starting point.
• the more specific your definition of the decision is to made, the
clearer will be your analysis and the likelihood of success.
• Successful decision makers explore all of the possible choices of
the situation.
• In fact many of the less obvious choices turn out to be the most
effective ones.
• In many cases, we may lack sufficient information to make an
informed decision.
• Analyze the advantages and disadvantages of each choice
• Synthesize all what you learned in previous steps and make a
conclusion that you believe to be your “best” choice.
• Once you have selected your best choice, you need to develop and
implement a specific and concrete plan of action.
• As you begin taking the steps in your plan, you will discover that
adjustments need to be made.
Six C's of Decision Making
• Construct a clear picture of precisely what must be decided.
• Compile a list of requirements that must be met.
• Collect information on alternatives that meet the requirements.
• Compare alternatives that meet the requirements.
• Consider the "what might go wrong" factor with each alternative.
• Commit to a decision and follow through with it.
Managerial Decision Making
• Decision making: the process by which managers
respond to opportunities and threats by analyzing
options, and making decisions about goals and
courses of action.

• Decisions in response to opportunities: managers

respond to ways to improve organizational
performance.

• Decisions in response to threats: occurs when

managers are impacted by adverse events to the
organization.
Types of Decision Making
• Programmed Decisions: routine, almost automatic process.
• Managers have made decision many times before.
• There are rules or guidelines to follow.
• Example: Deciding to reorder office supplies.
• Non-programmed Decisions: unusual situations that have not been
often addressed.
• No rules to follow since the decision is new.
• These decisions are made based on information, and a manger’s intuition,
and judgment.
• Example: Should the firm invest in a new technology?
The Classical Model
• Classical model of decision making: a prescriptive model that tells
how the decision should be made.
• Assumes managers have access to all the information needed to reach a
decision.
• Managers can then make the optimum decision by easily ranking their own
preferences among alternatives.
• Unfortunately, mangers often do not have all (or even most) required
information.
The Classical Model
List alternatives Assumes all information
& consequences
is available to manager

Rank each alternative Assumes manager can

from low to high process information

Assumes manager knows

Select best
the best future course of
alternative
the organization
The Administrative Model
• Administrative Model of decision making:
Challenges the classical assumptions that managers have and process all the
information.
• As a result, decision making is risky.

Bounded rationality: There is a large number of alternatives and information is

vast so that managers cannot consider it all.
• Decisions are limited by people’s cognitive abilities.

Incomplete information: most managers do not see all alternatives and decide
based on incomplete information.
Why Information is Incomplete
Ambiguous
Uncertainty Information
& risk

Incomplete
Information

Time constraints &

information costs
Decision Making Steps
Recognize need for a decision: Managers must first realize the need for which a decision
must be made.
Frame the problem: managers must frame problem for which decision is to be made.
Generate alternatives: managers must develop feasible alternative courses of action.
If good alternatives are missed, the resulting decision is poor.
It is hard to develop creative alternatives, so managers need to look for new
ideas.
Evaluate alternatives: what are the advantages and disadvantages of each alternative.
Managers should specify criteria, then evaluate.
Implement choose alternative: managers must now carry out the alternative.
Often a decision is made and not implemented.
Decision Making Steps
Recognize need for
a decision

Frame the problem

Generate & assess alternatives

Choose among alternatives

Implement chosen
alternative

Learn from feedback

Evaluating Alternatives
Is the possible course of action: • Is it legal? Managers must first
be sure that an alternative is
Legal? legal both in this country and
abroad for exports.
Ethical ? • Is it ethical? The alternative must
be ethical and not hurt
Economical? stakeholders unnecessarily.
• Is it economically feasible? Can
Practical? our organization’s performance
goals sustain this alternative?
• Is it practical? Does the
management have the
capabilities and resources to do
it?
Cognitive Biases and Heuristics
• A cognitive bias is a systematic pattern of deviation from norm or
rationality in judgment. Individuals create their own "subjective social
reality" from their perception of the input. An individual's
construction of social reality, not the objective input, may dictate
their behavior in the social world
• A heuristic technique, often called simply a heuristic, is
any approach to problem solving, learning, or discovery that employs
a practical method not guaranteed to be optimal or perfect, but
sufficient for the immediate goals
Cognitive Biases
•Suggests decision makers use heuristics to deal with bounded
rationality.
• A heuristic is a rule of thumb to deal with complex situations.
• If the heuristic is wrong, however, then poor decisions result from its use.
•Systematic errors can result from use of an incorrect heuristic.
• These errors will appear over and over since the rule used to make decision is
flawed.
Types of Cognitive Biases
Prior Hypothesis
Cognitive
Representativeness
Biases
Illusion of Control
Escalating Commitment
Prior hypothesis bias: manager allows strong prior beliefs about a relationship between
variables and makes decisions based on these beliefs even when evidence shows they are
wrong.
Representativeness: decision maker incorrectly generalizes a decision from a small sample
or one incident.
Illusion of control: manager over-estimates their ability to control events.
Escalating commitment: manager has already committed considerable resource to project
and then commits more even after feedback indicates problems
Group Decision Making
Many decisions are made in a group setting.
• Groups tend to reduce cognitive biases and can call on combined skills, and
abilities.
There are some disadvantages with groups:
Group think: biased decision making resulting from group members
striving for agreement.
• Usually occurs when group members rally around a central manger’s idea
(CEO), and become blindly committed without considering alternatives.
• The group tends to convince each member that the idea must go forward.
Improved Group Decision Making
• Devil’s Advocacy: one member of the group acts as the devil’s
advocate and critiques the way the group identified alternatives.
• Points out problems with the alternative selection.
• Dialectical inquiry: two different groups are assigned to the problem
and each group evaluates the other group’s alternatives.
• Top managers then hear each group present their alternatives and each group
can critique the other.
• Promote diversity: by increasing the diversity in a group, a wider set
of alternatives may be considered.
Devil’s Advocacy v. Dialectic Inquiry
Devil’s Advocacy
Dialectic Inquiry
Presentation of
Alter. 1 Alter. 2
alternative

Critique of Debate the two

alternative alternatives

Reassess Reassess
alternative alternatives
accept, modify, reject accept 1 or 2, combine
Organizational Learning & Creativity

• Organizational Learning: Managers seek to improve member’s ability

to understand the organization and environment so as to raise
effectiveness.
• The learning organization: managers try to improve the people’s ability to
behave creatively to maximize organizational learning .
• Creativity: is the ability of the decision maker to discover novel ideas
leading to a feasible course of action.
• A creative management staff and employees are the key to the learning
organization.
Senge’s Learning Organization Principles

Build complex,
Develop Personal
challenging
Mastery
mental models

Encourage
Systems
Thinking
Build Shared Promote Team
Vision Learning
Creating a Learning Organization

Senge suggests top managers follow several steps to build in learning:

• Personal Mastery: managers empower employees and allow them to create and
explore.
• Mental Models: challenge employees to find new, better methods to perform a task.
• Team Learning: is more important than individual learning since most decisions are
made in groups.
• Build a Shared Vision: a people share a common mental model of the firm to
evaluate opportunities.
• Systems Thinking: know that actions in one area of the firm impacts all others.
Individual Creativity
• Organizations can build an environment supportive of creativity.
• Many of these issues are the same as for the learning organization.
• Managers must provide employees with the ability to take risks.
• If people take risks, they will occasionally fail.
• Thus, to build creativity, periodic failures must be rewarded.
• This idea is hard to accept for some managers.
Building Group Creativity
• Brainstorming: managers meet face-to-face to generate
and debate many alternatives.
• Group members are not allowed to evaluate alternatives until all
alternatives are listed.
• Be creative and radical in stating alternatives.
• When all are listed, then the pros and cons of each are discussed
and a short list created.
• Production blocking is a potential problem with
brainstorming.
• Members cannot absorb all information being presented during the
session and can forget their own alternatives.
Building Group Creativity
• Nominal Group Technique: Provides a more structured way to
generate alternatives in writing.
• Avoids the production blocking problem.
• Similar to brainstorming except that each member is given time to first write down all
alternatives he or she would suggest.
• Alternatives are then read aloud without discussion until all have been listed.
• Then discussion occurs and alternatives are ranked.
Building Group Creativity
• Delphi Technique: provides for a written format
without having all managers meet face-to-face.
• Problem is distributed in written form to managers who then
generate written alternatives.
• Responses are received and summarized by top managers.
• These results are sent back to participants for feedback, and
ranking.
• The process continues until consensus is reached.
• Delphi allows distant managers to participate.
Inherent Personal Traps
• Trying too hard to play it safe.
• Letting fears and biases tilt your thinking and analysis.
• Getting lost in the minutia can cause trouble.
• Craving for unanimous approval.
• Trying to make decisions which are outside your realm of
authority.
Inherent System Traps
• Willing to begin with too little, inaccurate, or wrong information.
• Overlook viable alternatives or waste time considering alternatives which have no
realistic prospects.
• Not following the six C's.
• Failure to clearly define the results you expect to achieve.
• Worst of all, failure to reach a decision.