Management
...decision making? Discuss how does decision making fit into managerial activity?
Decision-making is a process of choosing among alternative courses of action in order to attain goals and objectives. Nobel laureate Herbert Simon wrote that the whole process of managerial decision-making is synonymous with the practice of management.1 Decision-making is at the core of all managerial functions. Planning, for example, involves deciding what should be done? When? How? Where? and By whom? Other managerial functions, such as organizing, implementing, and controlling rely heavily on decision-making.
Today's fast changing and global environment dictates that a successful enterprise has a rich decision-making process. This means not only gathering and processing data, but also making decisions with the support of state-of-the-art decision methods. Decision-making is the very foundation of an enterprise, and sound decision-making is absolutely necessary for gaining and maintaining a competitive advantage.
In many enterprises the decision process entails great time and effort in gathering and analyzing information. Much less time and effort go into evaluating alternative courses of action. The results of the analyses (there are often many, for example financial, marketing, operations, and so on) are intuitively synthesized to reach a decision. Research has shown that although the vast majority of everyday decisions made intuitively are adequate, perception alone is not sufficient for making complex, crucial decisions. Organizations that use modern decision support methods can gain and maintain a competitive edge in leading and managing global business relationships that are influenced by fast changing technologies and complicated by complex interrelationships between business and governments.
An individual can solve problems more realistically when he/she...
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