MANAGEMENT DECISIONS

Making Management Decisions

Making Management Decisions

1. Assessment of the Decision-Making 'Styles' Of the Key Individuals

William Stevenson:

William Stevenson is portrayed as an individual who is risk-averse and fears taking chances or risks in the course of his business. He is concerned with the technical aspects of the business, mainly in the manufacturing side. His approach for the business and the decision making “style” seems to be conservative as he does not want any differentiation for the business and would likely to manipulate available options in the same industry to tackle with the external pressures in the U.K. industries.

Harry Stevenson:

Harry is a sound businessman who is “risk-neutral” in the sense that his management decisions are backed by a logical and systematic justification. His prior job experience of a marketing analyst helps him to provide logic to his decisions and he does not avoid risk all in all. In fact, his approach includes providing a satisfactory justification along with possible consequences for every other decision that a company makes.

Imran Malik:

Imran, being an MBA graduate, is risk-loving individual who is willing to increase financial gains for MBC using risky yet optimistic approaches of his decision-making style. He seems to be concerned with increasing the profits of the company and does not avoid the drastic step of expansion into brand new markets altogether.

In my view, each of the three key individuals provides their own contributions to create a strong viability for the decision and have their own stance on the final outcomes. However, we will see the aspects or cognitive biases their decision-making style might bring into the final outcome or decision.

Possible Cognitive Biases

Cognitive biases include belief bias, the over dependence on prior knowledge in arriving at decisions. There are many cognitive biases that can negatively influence these individuals in their decisions. These biases include being unable to take risks just because a similar, prior experience turned bad. William's decision-making style prevents him from realizing any risk just because his prior experience of “risk-taking” was not fruitful. This means he will always be afraid of differentiating or going into newer markets.

Harry is a neutral person but his quest of finding logic and justification behind every possible outcome might make him too cautious and overwhelmed with new project options. This we say because there are times when business decisions do not provide any sound logic but they are very beneficial ...