Decision Making Models

Essay by tgandorfUniversity, Bachelor'sA+, February 2006

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Success as a manager is dependent upon good decision-making skills. To introduce my paper I will focus on consequential decision-making and systematic decision-making as two models of decision-making. I then will discuss a recent job related decision using one of these decision models and I will show how critical thinking impacted the decision. Good decision-making skills help to set a framework from which today's manager manages, motivates, and rewards his or her employees in an effort to get a job done well.

The consequential decision-making model employees the principle of listing pros and cons for which a manager will use to arrive at a decision. This is done typically when a manager must choose a course of action to take when dealing with a problem or opportunity which has arisen for the organization. To begin first the manager would chart out, using a columnar or box format, the objectives or alternatives to the problem or opportunity which has arisen.

Then the manager would use those objectives or alternatives, listing all the possibilities and all the consequences, to the problem or opportunity. The limitations to this decision model would be individual's involved must be driven to find the optimal solution to a course of action to take themselves. This model is similar to the classical decision-making model in that the consequential and classical decision-making models do not always present a clear, quick, and accurate description of how organizational decisions are made. A clearer picture is often obtained when using a systematic decision-making model (Johnson, 2005, P. 8).

The systematic decision-making model uses a five-step process for a manager to arrive at a decision. The first step for the manager would be to define a problem or recognize an opportunity for growth. For many decisions this step is the most important as...