ASSIGNMENT 2

Introduction to Management

OCTOBER 24, 2019

Name: Muhammad Hamza Barak

Reg. No: SP18-BSE-142
Section: IV-C
Instructor: Ma’am Salima Hafeez
 DECISION MAKING
“Decision making is regarded as the cognitive process resulting in the selection of a belief or a course
of action among several alternative possibilities. Decision-making is the process of identifying and
choosing alternatives based on the values, preferences and beliefs of the decision maker”
Decisions are made at every level of management to ensure organizational or business goals are
achieved. Further, the decisions make up one of core functional values that every organization adopts
and implements to ensure optimum growth and drivability in terms of services and or products
offered.
Decision-making involves the selection of a course of action from among two or more possible
alternatives in order to arrive at a solution for a given problem
Decision-making is an integral part of modern management. Essentially, Rational or sound decision
making is taken as primary function of management. Every manager takes hundreds and hundreds of
decisions subconsciously or consciously making it as the key component in the role of a manager.
Decisions play important roles as they determine both organizational and managerial activities. A
decision can be defined as a course of action purposely chosen from a set of alternatives to achieve
organizational or managerial objectives or goals. Decision making process is continuous and
indispensable component of managing any organization or business activities. Decisions are made to
sustain the activities of all business activities and organizational functioning.
Decision making process can be further exemplified in the backdrop of the following definitions these
are also categorize as steps of decision making.

1. IDENTIFY PROBLEM:
Every organization faces problems in its respective field to identify the problems following points
should be kept in mind:

• Check for the factor which affect the working of an organization that would be your problem.
• Be clear about what the problem is.
• Remember that different people might have different views of what the issues are.
• Separate the listing of issues from the identification of interests (that's the next step!).

Example:
If there is person, named Ahmed, running a software house with 5 teams having 5 employees each and
after some months he found out that usually there occurs ambiguity regarding task specification due to
which the organization couldn’t able to produce desire outcome. So, he First arrange a meeting with
each of his team manager and ask for the area of ambiguity and maintain a list of those factors which
affect the working of his organization.
2. IDENTIFY DECISION CRITERIA:
The Decision criteria in a Business setting are those variables or characteristics that are
important to the organization making the decision. They should help evaluate the alternatives from
which you are choosing. I use the word “variables” because you can disregard any characteristics that
are constant among the alternatives.
Ease of implementation, Cost, Ease of modification/scalability/flexibility, Employee morale, Risk
levels, Cost savings, Increase in sales or market, share, Return on investment, Similarity to existing
organization products, Increase in customer satisfaction are some example of decision criteria.

Example:
In our example Ahmed (C.E.O of his Company) will take ease of modification/scalability/flexibility,
increase in sales or market, similarity to existing organization products factors under consideration in
order to overcome the problem of ambiguity in his organization.

3. ALLOCATE WEIGHT TO CRITERIA:

Order the factors or your selected Decision Criteria with respect to your priority, this is said to
be as Allocate weight to Criteria.
Manage a list which contains all the lists necessary for taking decisions. These lists are gradually the
decision criteria then arrange them in such an order so that the task or the factor which are extremely
necessary to overcome first i.e. arranging your list on priority basis. The tasks of high priority should
be done first.

Example:
In our example Ahmed (C.E.O of his Company) will do meeting with his managers first then took the
“Pure documentation process” under consideration first as it is the basic issue for creating ambiguity
regarding developing product. Then CEO will take Ease of modification/scalability/flexibility and
then other as so on.

4. DEVELOP ALTERNATIVES:
In fourth step you have to build alternative for your problem. Look at your problems in different ways;
find a new perspective that you haven't thought of before. Brainstorming, or rapid noting of
alternatives no matter how silly, is an excellent discovery process. Once you have listed or mapped
alternatives, be open to their possibilities. Make notes on those that:
• need more information
• are new solutions
• can be combined or eliminated
• will meet opposition
• don’t consider any Alternative as a perfect solution
Example:
In our example Ahmed (C.E.O of his Company) will do meeting with his managers first then took the
“Pure documentation process” under consideration if that fails, he arranging meeting of client with his
managers after every week till the product become ready to deliver will consider as the alternative
solution for the previous one.

5. ANALYZE ALTERNATIVES:
Once alternatives have been identified, a decision maker must evaluate each one. Keep in mind that
these data represent an assessment of the eight alternatives using the decision criteria, but not the
weighting. When you multiply each alternative by the assigned weight, you get the weighted
alternatives. The total score for each alternative, then, is the sum of its weighted criteria. Sometimes a
decision maker might be able to skip this step. If one alternative score highest on every criterion, you
wouldn’t need to consider the weights because that alternative would already be the top choice. Or if
the weights were all equal, you could evaluate an alternative merely by summing up the assessed
values for each one
Example:
In our example Ahmed (C.E.O of his Company) with his managers analyze the solutions and the
alternatives for the problem of the organization. As the organization has chosen the meeting process
(take place between managers and the client) as an alternative. It could be effective in such a way that
it could deliver a good output and save time as teams get reviews of client after every week.

6. SELECT AN ALTERNATIVES:
The sixth step in the decision-making process is choosing the best alternative or the one that generated
the highest total in Step 5

Example:
In our example if optimize solution get fail, Ahmed (C.E.O of his Company) and his manager will
Select the alternative solution for his organization that is to arrange a meeting with the client in which
CEO and all the five team managers will take place, this meeting will be held after every week.

7. IMPLEMENT THE ALTERNATIVES:

In Step 7 in the decision-making process, you put the decision into action by conveying it to those
affected and getting their commitment to it. We know that if the people who must implement a
decision participate in the process, they’re more likely to support it than if you just tell them what to
do. Another thing manager may need to do during implementation is reassess the environment for any
changes, especially if it’s a long-term decision.
Example:
In our example Ahmed (C.E.O of his Company) and his manager will adapt the alternative solution for
his organization that is to arrange a meeting with the client in which CEO and all the five team
managers will take place, this meeting will be held after every week.

8. EVALUATE DECISION EFFECTIVENESS:

The last step in the decision-making process involves evaluating the outcome or result of the decision
to see whether the problem was resolved. If the evaluation shows that the problem still exists, then the
manager needs to assess what went wrong and analyze the problem and propose optimal solution for
them.

Example:
In our example Ahmed (C.E.O of his Company) and his manager will start getting proper
documentation and delivered a proper model for developing desired product, so that ambiguity among
the teams reduce and check out the effectiveness of decision by getting a product delivery report right
after the end of every week. If this solution fails, then move to the alternative one.