Decision processes assist business owners, managers, and executives to resolve challenges or complicated queries. Suitable decision support procedures help entrepreneurs to perform various functions such as concept ranking, resource allocation, multistage forecasting, cash flow analysis, performance enhancement etc. Decisions can be evaluated based on their requirements and processes. It is for this reason that this essay seeks to understand the different scenarios that utilize structured and unstructured decision-making procedures.
A structured choice contains elements such as evaluation, process, and data. Structured decisions are quite common in the business surrounding. The executives or managers place a rigid paradigm around the choice and those who make it. The officials examine or test structured decisions using a form or checklist to determine whether all the essential data required for the decision-making process is available (Inc. 5000 Conference and Gala, 2016). The organized mechanism involved in a structured decision-making procedure make it easier for the business to make defensible arguments and innovative alternatives. Structured decision-making is commonly utilized in assisting groups to work together productively on issues that exhibit controversial trade-offs and technical uncertainty (Bryman & Bell, 2015).
While unstructured choices contain similar elements as the structured decisions, there is not consolidated evidence concerning the nature of the choices. With an unstructured decision, an executive is allowed to use different processes or data sources to arrive at a conclusion (Inc. 5000 Conference and Gala, 2016). Owing to the uncertain nature of the unstructured decision-making procedure, very few individuals in a firm are allowed to take part in the activity. The choices are made in scenarios where the components of the business environment such as costs of raw materials, competitor response, and customer expectations are well understood (Kaner, 2014). The best strategy of validating the usefulness of an unstructured decision is by initiating an expert system or program that will simulate the entire process.
References
Bryman, A., & Bell, E. (2015). Business research methods. Oxford University Press, USA.
Inc. 5000 Conference and Gala. (2016). Decision Support Systems. Retrieved July 17, 2016 from http://www.inc.com/encyclopedia/decision-support-systems.html.
Kaner, S. (2014). Facilitator's guide to participatory decision-making. John Wiley & Sons.
