Members that participated in the activity:

 Learning outcome 1:

Decision making and its roles for managers and employees:

Decision making is a process of choosing an action plan or solution you are going to take in turn incurring opportunity costs.

Decision-making for managers and employees:

• Decision-making is regarded as one of the most important functions of management.
• Managers need to make decisions (forecast) on how new competitors will impact the business.
• Collective decision-making between managers and employees creates cohesion and competency.
• Decision-making will differ from managers and employees, managers usually make more long term, innovative decisions and employees make daily to hourly decisions like which customer to approach to sell a product.

Learning outcome 2:

Certainty

Is a condition under which individuals are fully informed about a problem, alternative solutions are obvious and the likely results of each are clear. Conditions of certainty allows anticipation of events and their outcomes it means that both problem and solution are known and well defined. Once an individual identifies an alternative solutions and their expected results making decision is relatively easy , decision maker simply chooses the best outcome .Decision making is under the condition of certainty is the exception for the most middle mangers  .

Risk

• Is the condition under which individuals can define a problem ,specify the probability of certain events and identify  alternative solutions and state the probability of each solution leading to the desired result .
• Risk also means that the problem and alternative solution fall somewhere between the extremes of being relatively common and well defined ,unusual and ambiguous .
• Probability is the percentage of times that a specific outcome would occur if an individual were to make  a particular decision a large number of times.
• Objective probability the likelihood that a specific outcome will occur ,based on hard facts and numbers
• Subjective probability the likelihood that a specific outcome will occur based on the personal judgement and beliefs .

Uncertainty

• The condition under which an individual does not have the necessary information to assign probabilities to the outcomes of alternative solution .
• An individual may not even be able to define the problem  and alternative  solutions
• It often suggest that the problem and the alternative solution are ambiguous and highly unusual
• Factors that may affect a decision such as price and production cost are difficult to analyse and predict
• Managers rely on creativity to craft response and problem solving.

Learning outcome 3:

                GOALS AND DECISION-MAKING

Decision-making in organisations under the conditions of risk and uncertainty is coupled directly with goals in one of two ways:

• The decision-making process is triggered by a search for better ways to achieve established goals
• The decision making process is triggered by an effort to discover new goals, revise current goals or drop outdated

The nature of goals

• Goals are consequences to be attained and as a consequences point out the direction selections and movements ought to be aimed.
• Clear goals specify the quality or quantity of the desired results

Why people set goals

1. Desires serve to focus individual and organisational choices and effort.

2. Goals aid the planning process

3. Goals motivate people and stimulate better performance

4. Goals assist in performance evaluation and control

General and operational goals

• General goals provide broad direction for decision-making in qualitative terms e.g. one of the general Mercedes-Benz in east London is to have the world-class technology to become world leaders in excellent    
• Operational goals state what is to be achieved in quantitative terms, for whom and within what time period e.g. an operational goal at Mercedes-Benz is to expand its export orders to target volumes of between 40 000 and 45 000 units annually.

Role of stakeholders

1.Demands are the desired expressed by powerful stakeholders that an organisation make certain decisions and achieve particular goals.To achieve its goals, it realises its commitment to achieving this by implementing a multi-million-rand strategy that is underpinned by four key initiatives

• Black economic empowerment (BEE)
• Social responsibility
• Industrial participation
• World e-inclusion

2. Constraints limit the types of goals set, the decisions made and actions taken. Two important constraints are laws and ethics

3.choices are goals and alternatives that organisations and individuals are free to select, but do not have to select.

 4.balanced scorecard keeps track of the key elements of an organisation strategy implementation by considering both internal and external stakeholder perspective. It does this by looking at the organisation`s strategic approach from four perspectives:

• The financial perspective
• The customer perspective
• The internal process perspective
• The learning and growth perspectives.

5. Financial perspective measures indicate whether an organisation`s strategy, implementing and execution are contributing to that organisation`s improvement in market value.

6. customer perspective of the balanced scorecard requires that the managers translate their general mission statement into specific measures that reflect the factors that affect customers the most

7. internal process perspective stipulates that customer-based measures are translated into measures of what the organisation must do internally to meet its customers` expectations

8. learning and growth perspective requires that organisations make continual improvements to their existing products and processes, and have the ability to introduce entirely new products with expanded capabilities.

Learning outcome 4:

How goals affect decision-making

Decision-making is coupled with goals in one of two ways:

• It is triggered by a search for better ways to achieve established goals
• It is triggered by an effort to discover new goals

The nature of goals

• goals indicate the direction in which decisions and action should be aimed.

Why people set goals.

• goals serve to focus individual and organisation decisions and efforts
• goals help the planning process
• goals motivate people and stimulate better performance
• goals help in evaluating and controlling performance

General and operational goals

• general goals provide broad direction for decision-making in qualitative terms
• operational goals state what is to be achieved in qualitative terms, for whom and within what time period

Role of stakeholders

• stakeholders play a crucial role in shaping the demand, constrains and choices of alternatives that managers and employees face and when setting goals.
• Demand- desires by stakeholders that an organisation make certain decisions on, and achieve particular goals.
• Constrains- limit the type of goals set, the decisions made and actions taken.
• Choice- goals and alternatives free to select, but are not selected.
• Financial perspective- the organisations improvement in market value.
• Customer perspective- factors that affect customers the most.

Internal process perspective- what must be done internally in an organisation to meet customers’ expectations.

Learning outcome 5:

The Rational

Prescribes a series of steps that individuals of a team should follow to increases the likelihood that their decisions will be logical and sound. A rational decision making permits the maximum achievements of a goal within  limitation of a situation .Its has seven steps process .1- its begins with the diagnosing the problem and moves through successive steps to follow up and control. It has the low risks when they can assign objectives probabilities to outcome.These steps can be summarized in the following way 1-define and diagnose the problem, 2- sets goals, 3-search for alternatives solutions,4-compare and evaluate the solutions ,5-choose the alternative solutions,6-impliments the selected.7-follow up and control.

BOUNDED RATIONALITY

It is very useful because it emphasis the limitation of rationality and provides a better picture of the day-to-day decision making process used by most people. It explain why different individuals make different decisions when they have exactly the same information. It refers to the individual tendency to do the following. Select less than than the best alternative solution. Engage in limited search for alternatives solution. Have inadequate  information and control over external and internal environment forces influencing the decision outcomes.

POLITICAL

This model describes the decision making process in terms of the particular interests and goals with the powerful external and internal stakeholders.Before  considering this model we must define power.To have power we must be able to influence or control the following factors, the definition of the problem , choice of goals and consideration of alternatives solution.The action and success of the organization and its structures.