Exam 12: Decision-Making Processes

The incremental model puts major emphasis on political and social factors that influence decision outcomes.

Discuss three special decisions circumstances that managers need to be concerned about today.

Apply the principles of escalating commitment to the following situation to carry it forward in time, imagining what would happen next: You are a marketing manager at PrintCards, where you have for ten years had the most successful software for creation of all types of cards in the home or office environment. However, PrintCards is finally faced with competition from a more powerful software package, new to the marketplace, that came in at a price that is half the price of PrintCards. PrintCards quickly began to lose market share, but initially made no adaptation. New product could not be delivered for months into the future because of the timing of the product development cycle. You made a decision not to change the pricing structure of PrintCards because of your department's analysis that the old, higher pricing structure was fitting for a product with such high name recognition. Market share continued to decline.

During the "specify decision objectives" step of the rational approach, the manager determines what performance outcomes should be achieved by a decision.

Explain what is meant by the bounded rationality perspective of decision making. Provide an example of decision making in your own life in which you can observe the effects of bounded rationality.

What is a decision interrupt? Give at least two examples from your own experience.

Intuition should NOT be used in organizational decision making.

Management science, although cumbersome, cannot produce failures in decision making.

Organized anarchy is characterized by rapid change and a collegial, nonbureaucratic environment.

In the textbook, he Gillette Company was given as an example of using a certain decision-making approach in the design of razors such as the Sensor. Explain the decision-making approach that was used.

What does the Carnegie model of organizational decision making say about organizational decisions?

The point of the rational approach is that managers use systematic procedures to arrive at good decisions.

What is the last step in the rational approach to decision making?

Nonprogrammed decisions are repetitive and well defined, and procedures exist for resolving the problem.

When decisions are nonprogrammed, ill defined, and piling on top of one another, there is no reason for the individual manager to even attempt to use the steps in the rational approach.

An organizational theorist said, "Decision making cannot be taught in a management class." In what ways do you agree with his statement? In what ways do you disagree?

The selection phase of the incremental model is very clear that managers must analyze and choose on the basis of objective criteria in order to avoid any future delay that would interrupt implementation.

Problemistic search means that managers look around in the extended environment until they find the perfect solution to eventually resolve a problem.

When the management team of an organization accepts a satisfactory rather than a maximum level of performance when making decisions, what are they engaging in?

Two explanations for managers escalating commitment to a failing decision are that (1) managers block or distort negative information when they are personally responsible for a negative decision and (2) consistency and persistence are valued in contemporary society.