Decision-Making Situation and the Issues That Emerged - Term Paper Example

Introduction In any workplace situation problem occurrence is almost eminent and unavoidable. However, this does not mean that organizations will stop functioning and become extinct. Some of the most successful companies in the world today like Apple, Google, Sony, Facebook and Microsoft are among the view companies that have managed to survive great turbulence in the world of business. Success of these companies is as a result of the process of decision making with regard to different investment strategies and business processes. Since can problems cannot be avoided at workplace, they should always be accepted as part of the normal processes and should be used as opportunities to study what is likely to affect the business and what needs to be improved (Das & Teng 1999). With this regard therefore, decision-making process is considered paramount in addressing various issues that are emerging in a business context and of which if not tackled, would adversely affect the business. Problem solving in many occasions is done at management level and it entails decision-making. Various techniques and processes are important in making effective decisions. Purpose of the report The aim of this report is to present a situation at workplace where I have been involved in decision-making. The report will specifically identify the decision-making situation and the issues that emerged using different academic theories, models and frameworks. On the other hand, this report will end by providing the reflection about the situation and how the issues might have been dealt with, if I had been exposed academic theories, models and frameworks. Presented situation Working with one of the electronic companies in the country and with the marketing function, appointed by the president marketing, I was expected to participate in a team of 6 members that was charged with the responsibility of making a decision between market development strategy and market penetration. This is after it had been noted that the company growth was stagnating at some point and more especially on the aspect of revenues and market share. Decision-making models and frameworks Different models and frameworks exist for decision-making. Different theories from the academic aspect are fundamental in designing different ways to make decisions. General approach One of the commonly applied decision making model, is the general approach. In this model, it is recognized that groups for making different decisions exist in different institutions, organizations and industries and which are aimed at combining individual expertise as one way of optimizing decisions. This model comes very useful when the group members are ready to integrate their knowledge, ideas, opinions and preferences for making a common decision. This approach can be addressed comprehensively in the functional theory on team decision-making effectiveness and which tend to actualize the process of optimizing decision-making. According to this theory, during the process of making decisions, the group is expected to fulfill different critical functions and which are very essential for decision quality (Wilson 2005). These functions include developing a thorough and proper understanding of the problem at hand, identifying the requirements that the decision is expected to satisfy, developing realistic, idealistic and eligible decision alternatives and evaluate the positive and negative sides and finally choosing the most suitable alternative decision that has the best trade-off in terms of advantages and disadvantages. This model in this situation was very conspicuous in identifying a number of issues that emerged. First and foremost, there was element of deciding who should be in the group and should not. It was almost evident members to the team were chosen into the team without having a specific criteria to follow. While the model identifies that a team in decision-making should comprise people from different background and specialties, in this case it emerged that majority of the members in the team were from the function. This revelation made it very difficult to incorporate different information from various functions such as operations and finance which are important in the process of reviewing the company growth strategies (Wilson 2005). Further, according to the model, there are various functions that the group to decision-making should strive to achieve. First and most important, is to ensure that the problem at hand is well understood and all the team members are aware of what the problem means to the overall performance of the organization. This could not become clear from the onset of making decision between market development and market penetration. This could make it very difficult for the team to state the starting point and as when things looked like the team deliberations could go on because there was very minimal communication between the top management, the marketing function and team in charge of decision-making. On the other hand, the model outlines that while making decisions on a given issue, different alternatives have to be developed. However, this was not the case with my team as already the president of marketing had stated what he wanted the decision to be zeroed in. this is actually a very serious challenge in decision-making . This is because it limits the minds of the minds and ideas by the team members in developing different problems to solving a particular problem (Kolbe & Boos 2009). Best practice approach According to the best practice model, an organization is expected to have a laid procedure which should be followed when tackling specific situation. For example, simple contexts for decision making are characterized by the ability to identify the cause-and-effect relations that can easily be comprehended by the team members. In some situation these relationships are established at the team level incase the situations vary and call for different actions. In this kind of situation with the realm that can be termed as “known knowns,” it is expected that the right is acceptable and undisputed as all parties share common ground and understanding. According to this framework, decision-making contexts are proper assessed and straightforward monitoring and control exercised. At this point leadership is expected to sense and categorize as well as respond accordingly to the emerging issues (Courtney 2001). What this means is that the leadership is expected to establish all facts about the situation, categorize them and thereafter then base their responses to the established responses. In other cases, the team members in decision making have the opportunity to identifying the problem and respond accordingly. Since managers and the rest of the staff have the necessary access to the information that is required to dealing with a given problem, the command and control style of determining different parameters that can work best. According to this framework, the directives and instructions are straightforward and to some point the decisions can be delegated or even controlled automatically. Under the best practice to decision-making or the process of reengineering, sense is easily created. Further, with this model, exhaustive communication between the top management and the employees is actually not very necessary since disagreements are actually very rare (Pugh 2007). In the case of my situation, based on this model, a number of issues emerged. First and foremost, in decision-making it is absolutely necessary to identify which problem is at hand and that is to be tackled and above all determining the cause-and-effect relationships in the problem and that can easily be understood by everybody. This in particular, proved sensible when it emerged that the decision-making was not easy or even contributing to the process of decision-making. This is because there was no cause-and-effect relationship that was established. Further, in the team, it was not easy to agree on the next cause of direction because it was no established system to reaching a common ground. What this led to in the team, different opinions and ideas that derailed the process. Further, it could not allow me to contribute extensively to the decision-making process since it was easy for me to comprehend the whole process and more the expectations of each party in the process (Stasser & Titus 2006). Since the decision in this situation was to choose between market penetration and development as one of the growth strategies for the company, one big problem that came on board and which affected by contribution to decision making is the inability to assess all the facts after the problem before giving my own view. This is because my contribution to the problem was informed by my own understanding and not perhaps what the organization wanted. To the team, this proved a little bit difficult since virtually almost every member in the team was faced with the challenge. This is because no designed and agreed criteria agreed to developing responses to various problems. Finally, this model has been very instrumental in identifying some of the major issues in decision-making (Courtney 2001). One such issue that emerged in this case is the process of ensuring that directives and instructions that govern the team. This is because the team members could go as far as downplaying the proposals or ideas by other team members. This greatly affected the contribution of the team members as it acted as a major demoralizing factor since many of the members felt that their contribution could be recognized. On the same line, agreeing on what is expected of each is very serious issue in the team that has been charged with the responsibility of making decisions. This approach is said to be very making the process of communication easier and acceptable by each member (Hackman et al 2000). Evaluation The issues that emerged in the process of decision-making could have been contributed by a number of factors. First and foremost, what I faced in the situation, is lack of expertise in actual practice. This is because I was exposed to the situation while having very little knowledge about decision-making and in particular from the academic point of view. This resulted into a situation where I could make contributions based on my own insight. This is because I had not been exposed to different decision making models which involve many people discussing on a given problem in order to solicit for a solution. Little academic knowledge on the identified models and other aspects like coordination and team work played a very significant role in failing to help the team analyze different aspects about the problem at hand and what parameters to look at when appraising the most suitable response. On the same line, communication has also been identified as a very important aspect that could have helped in improving my contribution to the team. This is because despite having some ideas that could in making a decision, it was very difficult for me to present myself in a formal and acceptable manner (Stasser & Titus 2006). It is from this situation that I came to learn that if I had learned about the said models, then it could have been easy to improve my problem analysis skills, relationships with others and also in improving my communication with others as well giving and taking instructions from the leaders and the managers in the team. After learning the different theories, models and frameworks, I can comfortably say that am now a professional in decision-making and that have become a good communicator, team member and coordinator than before. On the same regard, I am made to understand that business leaders have the burden to make, monitor and measure the success of their decisions both in the short and long-term and also the consequences they bare. Lately have come to find solice on knowing that it’s not easy to tell if the decision made at a particular point are really the best until the results are obtained. This is because decisions vary with the context and time which is affected by different variables (Hackman et al 2000). Conclusion Decision-making is virtually everywhere in one’s life both at work and in personal life and the fact is that decisions made are intended to solve different problems. However, what different, is the problem or the context and the person making the decision. Even though some decisions can be made without so much knowledge on various models and frameworks, it is evident various models are important in ensuring decisions are measured and their suitability established. This is because the ultimate objective of the decision being made is to provide the most appropriate response to a given problem. References Courtney, J.F. (2001). Decision-making and knowledge management in inquiring organizations: Toward a new decision-making paradigm for DSS, Decision Support Systems, 31, pp. 17–38. Das, T.K. & Teng, B.S. (1999). Cognitive biases and strategic decision processes: An integrative perspective, Journal of Management Studies, 36(6), pp. 757–778. Hackman, J.,Wageman, R., Ruddy, T.M. & Ray, C.R. (2000). Team effectiveness in theory and practice. In Cary Lynn Cooper & Edwin A. Locke (Eds.), Industrial and organizational psychology: Theory and practices (pp.109-129). Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Kolbe, M. & Boos, M. (2009). Facilitating Group Decision-Making: Facilitator's Subjective Theories on Group Coordination [68 paragraphs]. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 10(1), Art. 28, http://nbn-resolving.de/urn: nbn: de: 0114-fqs0901287. Pugh, D. S. (Ed.). (2007). Organization theory. London: Penguin. (Reprinted from Enacted sense making in crisis situations, Journal of Management Studies, 25, pp. 305–317 Russo, J.E. & Schoemaker, J.H. (2002). Winning decisions: How to make the right decision the first time, Piatkus: London. Stasser, G. & Titus, W. (2006). 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