Decision-making and communication
Question 1: Explain how the ability to control agendas can be used as a decision making tool.
The ability to control agendas is an important skill for managers and businesses in general. It entails establishing a tone and subject matter within a process of negotiation or discussion in order to influence other people within the discussion to respond appropriately. Being able to control the agenda is therefore regarded as a tool that can successfully be used for decision making. In order to drive decision making process within a specific direction, managers and leaders must be able to have a say in controlling the agenda of any negotiation or discussion.
Every organization has to be faced with situations where they make important decisions. Controlling the agenda during such discussions will enable an organization or individuals to clearly understand their position in the negotiations. They would be able to get into the discussions already having a standpoint and being fully aware of the strengths and weaknesses of the standpoint. For instance, if two parties are engaged in a deal, then the party that controls the agenda is able to increase the strength of its position and cause the other party to be influenced in its favor.
The items to be tabled for discussion are actually decided by the person or the party in control of the agenda. The order in which each item is presented indicate the level of importance of the item giving the parties enough time to deliberate on each of the issues hence influencing decision. The party in control of the agenda provides the information needed to begin the deliberations
Question 2: CASE STUDY (minimum of 350 words): You are a new MBA-hire at Badlands Bank and Loan and have been leading a team of five for three months. Your task was to set up a new Internet Website for loans to the college age demographic but you have found some questionable accounting practices discovered by two on your team. It seems Badlands forecloses on delinquent accounts of only 65 days after tripling the interest rate on the loan. What should you do next (you can't quit!) and what decisions will you make? You see some conflict coming up between your boss and your team.
Making a well-considered and timely decision on the case will help mitigate possible conflict between the boss and the team. This is an essential leadership skill that is expected of the team leader. Whatever decision that will be made by the team leader can positively or negatively affect his position. Making decisions is an essential part of this case that would defines the outcome of any actions taken by the team leader. It is the most fundamental step before execution of any action, and this is why critical analysis of the situation is encouraged before confronting it.
As a team leader being a good decision maker is being able to analyze the situation and clearly figure out which parts deserve careful thoughts. This case would require the team leader to make snap decision considering its nature. The starting point is to identify the nature of the decision to be made. See how the decision fits in with the situation, in other words consider its context. Establishing the context will enable the team leader to set boundaries for the thinking that he will be required to do. Secondly, drafting or structuring the decision will be necessary because it enables one to consider all option (Clement & Gregory, 1995). It is important for one to look at his or her personal values while structuring the decision.
It is also important to gather information about the situation before going ahead to take an action. The team leader could gather more information about every step he will take in his decision and also more information about his values. This will help him make a well considered decision that is a result of a critical analysis of the situation. Communication of the decisions reached is the next step to take. The team leader will be required to tell the boss about the problem and what solution he has come up with to fix the problem. Communication in this case seems to be the only solution that will help avoid conflict between the boss and the two members of the team. The conflict can also spill to the entire team and affect the team as well despite the fact that he is only a new employee. The boss does not need to know about the problem for himself. Communication will help to inform the boss early enough before things get out of hand.
Question 3: Define Simon’s concept of "Bounded Rationality" and its effectiveness as a decision-making process. Give two examples where this would be very effective to use.
The concept of bounded rationality is based on the idea that there are certain factors that limit the rationality of individuals during the process of decision-making. These factors include the amount of time that people take to reach a decision, cognitive constraints of individuals’ minds, and the information which they have. The concept assumes that reaching an optimal solution may not always be possible; however the decision maker is forced to use his or her rationality to make a decision after simplifying every available option. The concept is effective due to the fact that it has a heuristic approach to the process of decision making. It considers the immediate circumstance and seeks to find the best decision based on the circumstance.
Simon’s concept of bounded rationality can be applied in management as a process of decision making. Usually managers find themselves in situations where they do not have sufficient information as well as a lot of time to engage in optimal decision making. As a result, the managers are forced to make decisions based on the available circumstances. There are no perfect circumstances to ensure that they use the most of their rationality to make perfect decisions. It is only in perfect circumstances where it is possible to make optimal decisions as individuals. This means that the decision maker is not limited by time, and insufficient information. The concept of bounded rationality is therefore frequently utilized among managers in making their daily management decisions.
Customers, when deciding to buy a product also find themselves using the concept of bounded rationality. In most cases, customers have limited knowledge of a product but as human beings, they would try to act rationally. Consumer choices in such incidences are made based on the circumstance and their immediate needs.
Question 4: Describe the "Garbage Can" model of decision-making. Find a graphic illustration of this model online and include it in this essay giving credit for the link source
Fig 1: courtesy of http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/11/1/1/figure1.jpg
The garbage can model of decision making, developed by Michael Cohen, attempts to describe behaviors of organizations from a perspective that considers them to be organized anarchies. The organized anarchies are simply the organizations that experience a lot of uncertainty especially in the making decisions. The model therefore tries to explain how the process of decision making occurs in such organizations. There are basically three things involved in shaping the process of decision in such organizations. This include high rate of turnover, poorly understood technology, and problematic preferences.
The model views the process of decision making to result from independent organizational activities and events. When such events occur sequentially, the organization is forced to begin making decisions. Therefore decision making is not viewed as a step by step process that begins from one point and ends at another point. In most cases, it is assumed that decision making starts from a problematic event to try and find a solution. However, every event can be a beginning point for organizations to make decisions. The events can be problematic in nature, solution based, or having opportunities. All these are damped within an organization as a garbage can. Because of the nature of organizations being viewed as places with no order consequences may arise from the process of decision making. Such consequences include: proposing solutions even in cases where there are no problems, and sometimes it is possible for organizations not to solve any problem but make decisions. This implies that some problems may perpetuate but still remain unsolved, while other problems may be solved.
Question 5: Define and outline (a) omission and (b) distortion as two major forms of communication transformation. Give examples that are not found in the textbook or that you have personally experienced and what was done.
Omission as one of the forms of communication transformation occurs when managers and organization leaders fail to say certain important things that their people want to listen. It is a common mistake that gets hard to uncover over when repeated over a period of time. People would definitely try to read out certain message that they feel omitted from an important piece of communication. They fill in the blanks by themselves. For instance, if a manager fails to explain to his employees the reason behind the decision he makes, then most likely the workers would feel that they are not trusted. It is also important that organizational vision be communicated to employees so that they are able to know how to help the organization go where it wants to go.
A manager may want a certain financial project to be a company’s priority and fail to focus on the overall vision of the organization. By omitting communication of the company’s vision to employees and focusing all attention on money, then the organization will become money minded with no vision. In order to avoid omission, managers and organizational leaders can constantly review their communication with the help of other employees. This can be done by asking employees the kind of message they received from every communication made by the manager.
Distortion on the other hand occurs when the receiver of a message decodes something different from what the sender encoded and transmitted. This means that the original message was received differently. The process of communication in many organizations is simply mechanical where it involves a sender encoding a message and uses a channel of transmission to send it to the receiver who then decodes it to understand it. From a top down approach of communication in many organizations, it is easy for information to be distorted through the channels of transmission.
References
Clement, R. T., & Gregory, B. (1995). Creative Decision Making: A Handbook For Active
Decision Makers. Oak Street: Decision Research Institute.
Cohen, M., March, J., & Olsen, J. (1972). A Garbage Can Model of Organizational
Choice. Administrative Science Quarterly , Vol. 17, No. 1, pp. 1-25.
Hall, R. H., & Tolbert, P. (2009). Organizations: Structures, processes, and outcomes
(10 ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Hoffman, I. (2000). Controlling the agenda. New York: Prentice Hall.
James, M. (2000). A Primer on Decision Making: How Decisions Happen. Boston: The
Free Press
