Managing under Uncertainty - the Restaurant Manager - Essay Example

The Situation The key decision I experienced was up on a nearby restaurant offering a variety of soft drinks, fast foods and, snacks where I served on a part time basis to earn additional funds for my personal expenditures. On this particular day, the restaurant manager was undertaking his normal supervision rounds in the hotel consumer’s bay when he encountered a disagreement argument between a waiter and one of the customers. Personally, I was privy to the entire conversation between the two and I knew that the customer was wrong for he had ordered a given snack brand, only to his mind and defend that he had ordered a different one. The restaurant manager was evidently distraught with the incident and quickly apologized to the customer while openly scolding the employee and announcing that he was dismissed from the restaurant. In developing the decision, the manager was influenced by external factors, including the desire to develop an efficient and quality customer care service and the need to retain the already existing customers among others. Moreover, additional internal factors such as the manager’s perception of the incidence, regard for the involved employee and working relations between the two played a significant decision-making role in the restaurant. Consequently, the unfair dismissal of the employee led to a challenge and an indirect confrontation between the restaurant workers and the management. In this regard, there was a working go slow where the employees demonstrated clear signs of demotivation and lack of a drive and desire to work as had been the restaurant culture over the years. As such, this led to a declining service quality in the restaurant as well as late orders delivered to the customers, leading to a suggestion box surge with customer complaints on poor services within a week of the dismissal. Therefore, the above analysis establishes the chronology of a case that to my critical evaluation was poorly made and misused the existing decision-making theories and model. The sections below offer the decision’s critic as well as an alternative and relevant decision-making approach that the manager should have adopted in the existing situation. Decision Analysis An evaluation of the decision-making process adopted by the Manager depicts the application of two key theories, namely the availability heuristic and bounded rationality. In this regard, the decision analysis is an illustration of how manager can combine and apply two decision making theories as a means of developing quality and relevant decisions in organizations(Fitzgerald, 2013). As such, the analysis of the restaurant manager’s decision illustrates the application of both the availability heuristic and the bounded rationality approaches simultaneously Bounded Rationality An analysis of the decision making process illustrates the bounded rationality approach application through the use of limited information to make decisions on who between the customer and employee was in the wrong. Moreover, the time constraint to ensure customer satisfaction and reduce a ripple effect form other customers in the restaurant increased the time constraint and thus the manager had to develop a rational decision based on the limited time allowed in the situation at hand (Fitzgerald, 2013). Therefore, this analysis establishes that the prompt decision to dismiss the employee was based on a bounded rationality approach. In this case, the restaurant manager had past records detailing how the employee was failing in his customer services responsibilities, and thus, based on the limited information, the manager made his decision to dismiss the employee, not only as a short term mitigation strategy, but for long term customer service quality delivery in the restaurant. In making the bounded rationality, decision, the manager was guided the principals and values guiding the theory. On one hand, as Daft (2010) noted, the approach is applied and ideal for urgent situations. Evidently, the employee argument with the customer was an urgent issue that required urgency in resolving to ensure that discipline and employee service quality was maintained and enhanced. In this regard delays in execution the decision would have increased employee laxity in the perception that the manager was incapable of taking stern actions against their behavior and conduct in the workplace. In this case, the manager relied on the principle of urgency in the bounded rationality to ensure that his decision impact was felt by the employees. In addition, the manager applied the concept of the limited information available. In this regard, he relied on the minimal employee history information to make the dismissal information. In this regard, the practice was viable and justified in that initiating a process to attain additional information would have been expensive. Therefore, the manager applied the bounded rationality approach in making the employee dismissal decision as a tool to ensure the decision making process cost reduction. Availability Heuristic On one hand, the availability heuristic model in decision-making involves the adoption of the easiest and readily available convenient decision. As such, Hardman (2009) stated that the approach is ideal for emergency situations where decisions have to be made in absolute information absence. Therefore, under such a management approach, respective decision makers base their decision on personal interest, intuition and past experiences and encounters with the involved factors although in different forums. As such, an evaluation of the restaurants managerial decision-making process establishes that he applied and followed the model theory in apologizing and consequently dismissing the employee. Hence, the decision to apologize was based on the convenient reason for increasing the consumer satisfaction in the restaurant services and subsequently retaining them. Moreover, the decision to dismiss the employee was based on previous encounters with the employee were cases of poor customer services had been reported in the past and thus the manager concluded on the employee lack of skills. Therefore, the above analysis illustrates that the decision was partly based on the availability heuristic perspective. However, as Owen and Omodei (2013) argued, the adoption of this approach has its limits and challenges. Therefore, reliance on the historical employee working conditions denied him the opportunity for continuous improvement. In this case, if employee performances would be based on part performance only, and not on the present, this would lead to an eventual employee productivity decline and management responsiveness failure. Thus, the entire evaluation process establishes a lack of proper information search and use as a common business practice adopted by managers who wish to make easy decisions that are most convenient as per their perceptions through an overstatement of assumptions and exceptions offered in the respective decision making perspectives such as the availability heuristic and bounded rationality. However, as evidenced, this compromise on the decision-making process quality and the eventual risk of involved organizations and functions failure. Therefore, this analysis concludes that the restaurant manager’s decision to dismiss the employee under the disguise of the bounded rationality, decision-making theory principles, was ill-informed and wrong. Reflection In order to improve on the adopted decision making process by the restaurant manager I would adopt the theoretical assertion by Smythe (2003) who argued that quality decisions are based on available resources and alternatives use maximization. On one hand, in order to improve the decision making process, I would have exploited all the available information sources. Moreover, I would have delayed the dismissal decision to allow for queries with the involved employees, the supervisor on duty, fellow employes, as well as allow the customer to file a formal complain about the issue. In this regard, my eventual decision making process would have been based on an information diversified base, thus allowing for objectivity and justice to the customers, the employee, and the restaurant at large. In addition, I would have increased the bounded rationality, decision making through allowing for reduced tension in the decision making process. Often, as Dror, Peron, Hind and Charlton (2005) noted, decisions made in haste and emotions often have an element of emotions and irrationality in their contents. Therefore, instead of making the decision to dismiss or punish the employee, I would have allowed for a reasonable amount of time to pass. As such, this would have enabled all the involved stakeholders, especially the employees to all settle down and sober up their thinking and reasoning of the actual events evidenced. In this regard, this would elevate emotions and allow all the eye witnesses a sense of objectivity on their recount of events, thus allowing for a proper, fail and just decision development. Consequently, this would have reduced the overall employee demotivation challenge encountered in the restaurant case study. Although as Hoyer and MacInnis (2008) noted, the approach argues for the need to apply the readily relevant information to develop decisions, I would have incorporated a rather diverse informational base to make the decision. Although the concept of ensuring customer satisfaction for increased loyalty, it is also rational to ensure employee motivation and increased commitment to customer satisfaction. Thus, unlike the restaurant manager who applied to the customer focus alone in the apology and dismissal decision, I would have applied a combination of both in the decision making process. As such, besides apologizing to the customer, I would have assembled the employes after the day’s work before breaking for the next day, and explain to them on the rationale oof such a decision. In this case, this would have increased the employee satisfaction, reduced their resistance and thus overcoming the experienced go slow by the restaurant employees. References Daft, R. L. (2010). Management. Mason, Ohio: South-Western Cengage Learning.. Dror, I. E., Peron, A. E., Hind, S. L., & Charlton, D. (2005). When emotions get the better of us: the effect of contextual top‐down processing on matching fingerprints. Applied cognitive psychology, 19(6), 799-809. Fitzgerald, M. (2013) (Editor),Managing Under Uncertainty: A qualitative approach to decision-making, 2nd Edition, Pearson Hardman, D. (2009). Judgment and decision making. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Hoyer, W. D., & MacInnis, D. J. (2008). Consumer behavior. Mason, OH: South-Western Owen, C., & Omodei, M. (2013). Enhancing individual and team performance in fire and emergency services, Ashgate, Farnham Smythe, D. J. (2003). Bounded Rationality, The Doctine of Impracticability, and the Governance of Relational Contracts. S. Cal. Interdisc. LJ, 13, 227. Read More