Week 5: Decision making, Change and Innovation
Concept/ Mode/ Theory Definition:
_ As defined, decision making is synonymous with managing and it is
part of all four management functions:
• Planning
• Organizing
• Leading
• Controlling
_ According to Robbin… decision making process is a set of eight steps
including identifying a problem, selecting an alternative and evaluating
the decision’s effectiveness:
• Step 1: Identifying a problem
• Step 2: Identifying of decision criteria
• Step 3: Allocation of weights of criteria
• Step 4: Development of alternatives
• Step 5: Analysis of alternatives
• Step 6: Selection of an alternative
• Step 7: Implementation of an alternative
_ There are three views that how managers make decisions:
• Rationality describes choices that are consistent and value-
maximizing within specified constraints. This chart below is given
as an example:
•
Rational decision
Problem is clear
and unambiguous?
Single, well-defined
goal to be achieved?
All alternatives and
consequences known?
Preferences are clear?
Preferences are
constant and stable?
No time or
cost constraints exist?
Final choice will
maximise payoff?
• Intuition is subconscious process of making decisions which
takes from previous experience, “Gut-Level Feeling”, and
Accumulated judgment. Furthermore, there are also some sub
unit for Intuition with explanations in detail:
o Experienced based decisions is decisions based on past
experience
o Affect-initiated decisions is decisions based on feelings and
emotions
o Cognitive-based decisions is decisions based on skills,
knowledge, and training
o Subconscious mental processing is decisions based on
subconscious data
o Values or ethics-based decisions is decisions based on
ethical values or culture
_ Moreover, there are four decision making styles:
• Conceptual style is a decision making style characteristed by a
high tolerance for ambiguity and an intuitive way of thinking
Rich Description of Practice in Group:
_ On 22/08/2007, our group had an weekly meeting at library to
discuss about what we should finish for this week. According to our
group timetable for the whole poster assignment, I oughtn’t to have
sent my researches to Mac by 24/08/2007, but we have just know that
he dropped this subject already, so I sent it straight to Nick- text editor.
Anyway, it didn’t affect us too much; we just organize a little bit in our
group’s responsibilities. However, our poster was nearly finished so we
thought we could continue to work without any problem. Moreover, in
this group meeting, we decided the format, outline and style of our
poster carefully and Louiza would sent it to every member by next
week so that we can double check everything again before moving to
the next step of the process. Actually, the design was really hard
because it requires high level skill in Photoshop program to make a
fantastic poster. Because thinking of ideas were hard and to execute
from these was harder. Afterward, when I and Jing sent our researches
to Nick, he would review, organize them again and choose which one
should be suit with the poster. Then, Nick would submit finalized
written work to Louiza- Designer and she would decide where to put
them in our poster in a logical and relevant way so that it could attract
many readers and easy for them to follow our poster. James- Project
manager, he seems to take the most important part in our group,
because he has to evaluate and find out the problems during the
process then try to solve them soon. Our responsibilities were
coordinated effectively and interdependently, we had a clearly
timetable, therefore we just follow this and try our best to finish our
part perfectly.
Analysis and Critical Reflection of relationship between
Theory and Practice in Group:
_ As mentioned on some previous journal entries, our group is
committed to achieving the highest result for this poster assessment
so it was considered as the whole process in which decision making
process absolutely involved. We have followed 8 steps correctly
through out the process. In step 1, we identified the problem is
finishing the poster assessment which contains two parts are poster
proposal and group poster respectively. The second step was
identifying of decision criteria which are company with well organized,
company having relevant information and management theories
required, company with large market share in the market and company
is familiar with all people. Then we weighted each criterion to
determine which one is the most, more and less important one. This
step is defined as allocation of weights of criteria. In fact, we chose
company having relevant information and management theories
required is the most important by giving it 10 marks, company is
familiar with all people got 8 marks, company with well organized got 5
marks and finally company with large market share got 3 marks. After
that is the development of alternatives step which concerns with listing
all relevant companies, there were Myer, Virgin Group, Rupert Murdoch
and Westpac. Once the alternatives have been identified, we began to
analyse each one critically. By appraising it against the criteria
established in step 2 and 3. From this comparison, the strengths and
weakness of each alternative can be determined. After analyzing and
thinking carefully, we moved to step 6 is selection of an alternative. For
this fact, we chose Virgin Group for our poster assessment. Because it
generated the highest total mark in step 5. Then step 7 is
implementation of the alternative, we start to research all relevant
information for Virgin Group and prepared this for the poster proposal.
Finally, step 8 is evaluation of decision effectiveness, it evaluate the
outcome of the decision to make sure whether it still had any problem.
When the problem has been identified, we had 2 different views that
could make decisions. First is rationality, in this view, there were lot of
questions being asked to determine the problem, so that we could
identify a clear goal because everyone in our group had different goals.
After all, we knew that our problem was clear and unambiguous which
was also single and well defined goal to be achieved. Moreover, all
alternatives and consequences were clearly known and we believed
that final choice would maximize payoff. Next, intuition was our second
view; it is subconscious process of making decisions. Basically, it bases
on previous experience, “Gut-Level Feeling” and accumulated
judgment. From this view, we got opinions from other people about our
decision making’s alternatives for which company should be better.
After analyzing all different opinions, we chose Virgin Group. In
addition, all of us had good feelings on this company. It is a big and has
a wide range of data to be researched. We also involved in decision
making styles. It was conceptual in which we had lots of creative ideas
and ways of thinking about our decision. Certainly, our aim was to
make it more interesting and maximized outcomes.