Models of Decision Making - Essay Example

Decision Making Models From time to time, there is always a need to innovate, in order to increase profitability in the organization that one works with. This was exactly the idea I had in mind when I decided to outsource the services of an Indian firm in revising the structure of one of our database. I have heard and read a good amount of news, extolling the virtues of outsourcing and the decision was easy to make. It appeared promising from the outset: the cost is a fraction of what we would have to spend and the programmers seemed capable.

The problem came when the project was finished and the quality was not what we expected it to be. Although, the offshore firm was willing to do revisions, there were issues of quality control, language barrier, distance and timing to contend with. Maybe it was partly because it was the first time we use outsourcing service, but the foray was certainly disastrous. In line with the normative model, I have tried the outsourcing initiative with the idea that I am doing whatever yields the best consequences for the company in the future.

I have asked myself several times, if by outsourcing I am displaying some form of personal bias and have found that maybe I am, in an effort to cut cost for the current year. I was working now on descriptive model grounds. It never occurred to me to dig deeper on this area in the course of my judgment. If after identifying this bias, I could have tried to correct it by analyzing further what others would have done and by doing some research in order to be objective with my decision. This would have been the prescriptive decision making model and I have missed to comprehensively use it.

When I decided to outsource service, it was a decision in the area of the normative model as I am concerned with cost-cutting and the profit for my company. However, when I arrived at the decision of choosing an Indian firm to outsource our database revision, I was working within the descriptive decision making model. Prescriptive model would have required me to explore the judgment, beliefs and preferences of decision makers in relation to issues before them (Rios 1994, p. 25) and would lead me to choose a better outsourcing destination or simply hire an additional staff to work on the database in-house.

According to Grunig and Kuhn (2005 p. 8), a decision can be approached: 1) purely intuitively, 2) through routine recourse to procedures used in the past, 3) by adopting unquestioningly the suggestions of experts, 4) by choosing at random or 5) by systematic rational thought supported by relevant information. In retrospect, my decision was guided by a combination of numbers 1 and 5. I would have to say that in my analysis I have found that people are more inclined to arrive at decisions based on emotions and some form of personal bias, hence in the realm of psychological and behavioral inclinations.

Experience is good tool in arriving at sound decision making in the future. Previous failures, disappointments or successes are outcomes that are useful in correlating information in order to come up with productive judgments coming out of more and better choices. Finally, one lesson learned out of this foray is that the three decision models could actually work hand in hand, complementing each other, to maximize the percentage of success. The comparison of judgments to standards allows the comprehensive evaluation, serving the decision maker’s end best.

(Koehler and Harvey 2004, p. 19)ReferencesGrunig, R. and Kuhn, Richard. (2005). Successful Decision-making: A Systematic Approach to Complex Problems. SpringerKoehler, D. and Harvey, N. (2004). Blackwell Handbook of Judgment and Decision Making. Blackwell PublishingRios, S. (1994). Decision Theory and Decision Analysis: Trends and Challenges. Springer