DECISION MAKING IN BUSINESS AND MANAGEMENT

Types of Business Decisions

1. Programmed Decisions These are standard decisions which always follow the same routine. As such, they can be written down into a series of fixed steps which anyone can follow. They could even be written as computer program
2. Non-Programmed Decisions. These are non-standard and non-routine. Each decision is not quite the same as any previous decision.
3. Strategic Decisions. These affect the long-term direction of the business eg whether to take over Company A or Company B
4. Tactical Decisions. These are medium-term decisions about how to implement strategy eg what kind of marketing to have, or how many extra staff to recruit
5. Operational Decisions. These are short-term decisions (also called administrative decisions) about how to implement the tactics eg which firm to use to make deliveries.

Figure 1: Levels of Decision-Making

Figure 2: The Decision-Making Process

The model in Figure 2 above is a normative model, because it illustrates how a good decision ought to be made. Business Studies also uses positive models which simply aim to illustrate how decisions are, in fact, made in businesses without commenting on whether they are good or bad.

Linear programming models help to explore maximising or minimising constraints eg one can program a computer with information that establishes parameters for minimising costs subject to certain situations and information about those situations.

Spread-sheets are widely used for ‘what if’ simulations. A very large spread-sheet can be used to hold all the known information about, say, pricing and the effects of pricing on profits. The different pricing assumptions can be fed into the spread-sheet ‘modelling’ different pricing strategies. This is a lot quicker and an awful lot cheaper than actually changing prices to see what happens. On the other hand, a spread-sheet is only as good as the information put into it and no spread-sheet can fully reflect the real world. But it is very useful management information to know what might happen to profits ‘what if’ a skimming strategy, or a penetration strategy were used for pricing.
The computer does not take decisions; managers do. But it helps managers to have quick and reliable quantitative information about the business as it is and the business as it might be in different sets of circumstances. There is, however, a lot of research into ‘expert systems’ which aim to replicate the way real people (doctors, lawyers, managers, and the like) take decisions. The aim is that computers can, one day, take decisions, or at least programmed decisions (see above). For example, an expedition could carry an expert medical system on a lap-top to deal with any medical emergencies even though the nearest doctor is thousands of miles away. Already it is possible, in the US, to put a credit card into a ‘hole-in-the-wall’ machine and get basic legal advice about basic and standard legal problems.