Judgment and Decision Making for Engineers - Literature review Example

Judgment and decision making for engineers Name Institution Date Judgment and decision making for engineers Reading 1.3 Jackall, R, 1988, Chapter 4: Looking up and looking around, in Moral Mazes, Oxford University Press, NY. Decision making is an extensive exercise that requires authority and advanced patterns of management. The way decisions are made in an organization or any profession is the core to their success. Scientific theories have described how managers in corporations make decisions. For example, managers in organizations make decisions through consensus whereby the manager as a leader brings together employees and other departmental managers to work together as a team for the purpose of achieving a common goal. This requires managers to have persuasion skills so as to communicate the vision and use their leadership to lead others in taking action towards a defined goal. Even though teamwork can be seen between managers and employees, it only conceals the different challenges that managers face during decision making. Therefore, it requires authority and professionalism in making rational decisions for managers in an organization. Max Weber and Karl Mannheim are theorists who described how managers make decisions in the organization. They argue that functional rationality is the basis with which managers make decisions in an organization. Functional rationality involves making decisions based on planned as well as calculated activities to achieve a definite goal. These theorists differentiated between functional rationality as well as substantive rationality. Substantive rationality applies to when managers make decisions through critical reasoning and reflection. Here, they assess as well as evaluate the specific goals to be achieved that guide their decisions. Functional rationality applies in bureaucratic settings and critical reasoning does not apply to managers when making decisions. A better decision from a lower level manager can be ignored over the one for a top manager. Lower level managers are required to implement policy. In administrative science, scientific theories suggested a step by step decision making process that should be used by managers so as to make effective decisions for the organization. Example Engineers are people who are required to make decisions from time to time and especially when exposed to risks. The risk of technical defaults during work is a risk situation that engineers may anticipate to occur. Scientific theory applies here and engineers are required to take step by step process so as to make good decisions to deal with the risk situation. Considering that one does not know what will happen and there is a likeliness of occurring of something bad. An engineer should consider these possibilities and take the necessary precautions immediately. Referring to statistics is essential to identify what actions other engineers took in a similar situation. Then, these actions need to be discussed with colleagues so as to share views and come up with better decisions. These steps are essential to help an engineer make good decisions that are consistent with their preferences as well as attitudes towards risk. Reading 2.2 Kahneman, D. and Tvesky, A, 1984, Choices, values, and frames, American Psychologist, Vol.39, Iss.4. Making decisions in risky and riskless contexts is usually determined by cognitive as well as psychological factors of choice. When value is to be considered, a person makes decision to evade risk so as to achieve gains. When one oversees a possibility of incurring losses, the decision to take a risk not to incur such losses will be made. A person accepts a chance of gaining when there is a surety and a high probability of the event to occur. When a moderate or low probability of the event to occur, one will not decide accepting the chance. Based on cognitive and psychological determinants, people make choices depending in different preferences of the outcomes. Rational choice will apply in many cases when an individual is making a decision. In making a rational choice, one is required to process mental calculations by organizing outcomes of events as well as explaining some anomalies of behavior. Specifically, the acceptance of a choice will depend on the evaluation of a positive outcome as the result. If not, then, one will not take that choice. The decision problems in such a case involve people systematically violating the rationalities of consistency as well as coherence. The psychological principles are the determinants in decision making in such situations. The decision problem is usually determined by the options that a person must choose, possible consequences of the actions as well as the contingencies that are associated with the actions. A decision frame that is adopted by the decision maker is controlled by the problem formulation, norms, habits as well as the personal traits of the decision maker. One may have different decision frames that can be compared on various perspectives. Among the various perspectives, the decision maker will select the best alternative that presents the most favorable outcomes. Example As an engineer I have an experience of making choices when faced with situations that are risky. I had two options to choose during my contract at work. I was offered a private job that was paying twice the amount of contract at my work place. At the same time, my contract at work was not complete and I had to attend my daily duties. This was a critical time that needed the best decision to be made. I had to weigh the benefits I will gain from my private contract and maintaining my current job which I am assured of. If I fail to take the private contract, I will loss a pay twice my contract amount. If I take the private contract, I will lose my contract with my current company. I chose to accept the offer with the private company for I was to gain more benefits. Reading 5.2 Hogarth, R,1981, Beyond discrete biases: functional and dysfunctional aspects of judgmental heuristics, Psychological Bulletin, Vol.90, Iss.2. The use of Heuristics in making judgments creates biases to decisions that are made. Heuristics is making use of predictive judgments based on the situation and experience of a person in a particular field. However, these judgments are not always accurate as predicted. Individuals usually apply simplified methods of decision making strategies as well as mental shortcuts to make decisions when they don’t have important information. This makes this decisions complex and sometimes under uncertain conditions that may cause risks if the decisions do not work as expected. These risks increases since inferences and judgments made are inaccurate causing biases as well as inconsistencies. Heuristics usually focus on discrete incidents hence undermining the importance of feedback in the decision making process. The judgments do not accept questioning of various assumptions that are implicit in the discrete. At the end, it may be costly and causing severe errors when optimal judgments do not coincide with the decisions made under uncertainty. However, expert opinion has been established to overcome these biases when making decisions under uncertainty. It is important to note that the use of analytical methods that are suitable for the facilitation of the decision making process will work along way in avoiding biases created by heuristic judgments. These methods are important in evaluation similar situations and providing feedback to experts before making a judgment. The judgment becomes an interactive process which is continuous used by people in coping with the environment. Feedback is important in the ingoing process of decision making as well as questioning of different assumptions that may improve the decisions made. This means that so as to avoid biases through the use of heuristics in discrete incidents, it is essential to apply theoretical as well as methodological processes in a continuous decision making process. Example The predictions made by engineers are questioned when it comes to public safety since the public is not involved when making such decisions. However, as an engineer, I have experience that the judgments made by engineers are reliable. The reason is that engineers apply probability to engineering problems. This yields satisfactory results when the aspects of probability are subjective. They also use parameters to make their predictions hence their opinions are not bias. From my experience, a number of engineering problems are usually addressed by developing a repertoire of heuristics. Engineers make of use of the rule of thumb to make the most suitable decision for a situation. We use an initial hypothesis so as to predict outcomes in the future. The use of hypothesis is a sure way of developing an accurate prediction for engineers. Engineers also use decision support systems to make decisions about the future based on similar events that occurred in the past. Reading 8.1 Linstone, H. (1984), ‘Our proposed perspectives’ in Linstone, H., Multiple Perspectives for Decision Making, North Holland, NY. Multiple perspectives for decision making is today encouraged in many organizations. This is to consider the views of all stakeholders who are involved or affected by the decision. Multiple perspectives for decision making are used in sociotechnical systems. The aim is to make decisions for solving problems that are technological in nature but surrounded and interacting with social as well as human facets. When making such decisions, organizations should understand that technology is entrenched within the environment of human beings. Therefore, technology has the capacity of benefiting people, hurting them as well as changing them or their lives. People have the capacity to make decisions to limit, develop, alter or even stop the technology. This will depend on the effect of technology to the people. Strategic decisions should be made considering the environmental impacts that technology will have on people. Human beings act as social and individual entities. All the relationships in sociotechnical systems must be considered when making strategic decisions including; technical, organizational/social as well as personal/individual relationships. Sociotechnical setting should be evaluated to determine how technology interacts with the organization and support in decision making. Evaluation should also be done to understand how technology impacts on individuals and how the individuals impact on technology. All stakeholders including the family, church, the State, companies, individual beneficiaries and victims, regulator should come together and present their views before a strategic decision is made. The interplay between organizations and individuals is the political power required in making strategic decisions. The final decision will be arrived at after consultations with all stakeholders that affect and are affected by the technology. Continuous review of the strategic decision is necessary when the decision influences technology and the stakeholders. Amendments can be made to arrive at the most suitable decision that favors all. Example As an engineering expert, I have experienced different times when my organization makes strategic decisions. My organization did a public strategic planning for the new technology that was being introduced to the people. The company used a socio-technical approach that involved the application of multi-methodological framework. Decision support systems were used to structure the problem. Different criteria were used to perform the decision analysis. Strategic thinking was applied in the decision making process for the support of all key players. Companies, political actors and individual citizens were present to discuss the objectives if the new technology and how it should be implemented. References Hogarth, R, 1981, Beyond discrete biases: functional and dysfunctional aspects of judgmental heuristics, Psychological Bulletin, Vol.90, Iss.2. Jackall, R, 1988, Chapter 4: Looking up and looking around, in Moral Mazes, Oxford University Press, NY. Kahneman, D. & Tvesky, A, 1984, Choices, values, and frames, American Psychologist, Vol.39, Iss.4. Linstone, H, 1984, Our proposed perspectives, in Linstone, H., Multiple Perspectives for Decision Making, North Holland, NY. Read More