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Managerial Decision Making

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1. How did the decision making process help to create the problems for the Ford Pinto? Do these decisions represent optimizing behavior or satisfying on the part of Ford? If you were Lee Iacocca, would you have decided differently? How?

During the decision making process, I find that Ford failed to consider what is in the best interest for the consumers, the organization wanted to create a quick fix solution thus alleviating responsibility to a nationwide safety concerns. When making decisions the organization is suppose to compare and contrast the pros and cons of every intricate detail within the manufacturing process. Instead of conducting primary and secondary research, the organization decided to take a shortcut in producing a product that compromised the safety of others and generated unnecessary legal ramifications that could have otherwise been prevented. The organization was more focused on manufacturing a compact vehicle for convenience in which case the product turned out to be a convenient death hazard. It is my belief that due to the organization reducing the time span of product concept and development, the company was at a disadvantage for the reason that the organization could not properly assess whether or not every need was being facilitated within the vehicle which opened the door to shoddy product distribution and decreased customer service satisfaction, with the increased number of casualties as a result.

Lee Iaccoca's decision to speed up the process was definitely optimizing behavior, Lee felt as if speeding up the process would enable the organization to quickly launch the product in order to boost productivity and profitability. On the surface, this decision did not pose a threat within the organizations competitive analysis, however, speeding up the process of making a vehicle for consumers will only increase the probability of fatalities. Although, Lee knew that something needed to change within Ford's product infrastructure, I find that the organization would have had a better advantage if the organization did not conduct the tooling procedure simultaneously with the product development. I would have waited until the product development, research analysis and beta testing were completed first before tooling. Another mistake the organization made was not taking the crash test seriously, when they discovered that Pinto was failing the crash test, the organization should have continued developing the product in order to increase safety measures and reduce safety hazards. The organization needed to take time to further develop the product to ensure all potential glitches were examined and eliminated before launching the product to the public. It is better to ensure all safety procedures, regulation, and precautions are taken into consideration before actually launching the product.

2. Compare and contrast individual and group decision-making. What are the advantages and disadvantages of each? Are there certain decisions that are better suited to individual decision-making? What bounded awareness issues are found in individual versus group decision-making? Cite a minimum of two sources.

Individual and group decision making are both beneficial within an organization, however, there are critical decisions to make that either individual or group may not be able to make without relying on others or one's own ability to make pertinent decisions based on analytics and critical thinking. It is believed that when dealing with a group the old cliché holds true such as; "too many chiefs and not enough Indians." Oftentimes, there is a possibility that division may arise due to various personality characteristics and/or traits that does not always cause individual to move forward on one accord. Each member will have their own ideas about forward movement and may not always agree with the direction, policies, vision, mission, or how to complete a task.

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Solution Summary

1. How did the decision making process help to create the problems for the Ford Pinto? Do these decisions represent optimizing behavior or satisfying on the part of Ford? If you were Lee Iacocca, would you have decided differently? How?

During the decision making process, I find that Ford failed to consider what is in the best interest for the consumers, the organization wanted to create a quick fix solution thus alleviating responsibility to a nationwide safety concerns. When making decisions the organization is suppose to compare and contrast the pros and cons of every intricate detail within the manufacturing process. Instead of conducting primary and secondary research, the organization decided to take a shortcut in producing a product that compromised the safety of others and generated unnecessary legal ramifications that could have otherwise been prevented. The organization was more focused on manufacturing a compact vehicle for convenience in which case the product turned out to be a convenient death hazard. It is my belief that due to the organization reducing the time span of product concept and development, the company was at a disadvantage for the reason that the organization could not properly assess whether or not every need was being facilitated within the vehicle which opened the door to shoddy product distribution and decreased customer service satisfaction, with the increased number of casualties as a result.

Lee Iaccoca's decision to speed up the process was definitely optimizing behavior, Lee felt as if speeding up the process would enable the organization to quickly launch the product in order to boost productivity and profitability. On the surface, this decision did not pose a threat within the organizations competitive analysis, however, speeding up the process of making a vehicle for consumers will only increase the probability of fatalities. Although, Lee knew that something needed to change within Ford's product infrastructure, I find that the organization would have had a better advantage if the organization did not conduct the tooling procedure simultaneously with the product development. I would have waited until the product development, research analysis and beta testing were completed first before tooling. Another mistake the organization made was not taking the crash test seriously, when they discovered that Pinto was failing the crash test, the organization should have continued developing the product in order to increase safety measures and reduce safety hazards. The organization needed to take time to further develop the product to ensure all potential glitches were examined and eliminated before launching the product to the public. It is better to ensure all safety procedures, regulation, and precautions are taken into consideration before actually launching the product.

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1. How did the decision making process help to create the problems for the Ford Pinto? Do these decisions represent optimizing behavior or satisfying on the part of Ford? If you were Lee Iacocca, would you have decided differently? How?

During the decision making process, I find that Ford failed to consider what is in the best interest for the consumers, the organization wanted to create a quick fix solution thus alleviating responsibility to a nationwide safety concerns. When making decisions the organization is suppose to compare and contrast the pros and cons of every intricate detail within the manufacturing process. Instead of conducting primary and secondary research, the organization decided to take a shortcut in producing a product that compromised the safety of others and generated unnecessary legal ramifications that could have otherwise been prevented. The organization was more focused on manufacturing a compact vehicle for convenience in which case the product turned out to be a convenient death hazard. It is my belief that due to the organization reducing the time span of product concept and development, the company was at a disadvantage for the reason that the organization could not properly assess whether or not every need was being facilitated within the vehicle which opened the door to shoddy product distribution and decreased customer service satisfaction, with the increased number of casualties as a result.

Lee Iaccoca's decision to speed up the process was definitely optimizing behavior, Lee felt as if speeding up the process would enable the organization to quickly launch the product in order to boost productivity and profitability. On the surface, this decision did not pose a threat within the organizations competitive analysis, however, speeding up the process of making a vehicle for consumers will only increase the probability of fatalities. Although, Lee knew that something needed to change within Ford's product infrastructure, I find that the organization would have had a better advantage if the organization did not conduct the tooling procedure simultaneously with the product development. I would have waited until the product development, research analysis and beta testing were completed first before tooling. Another mistake the organization made was not taking the crash test seriously, when they discovered that Pinto was failing the crash test, the organization should have continued developing the product in order to increase safety measures and reduce safety hazards. The organization needed to take time to further develop the product to ensure all potential glitches were examined and eliminated before launching the product to the public. It is better to ensure all safety procedures, regulation, and precautions are taken into consideration before actually launching the product.

2. Compare and contrast individual and group decision-making. What are the advantages and disadvantages of each? Are there certain decisions that are better suited to individual decision-making? What bounded awareness issues are found in individual versus group decision-making? Cite a minimum of two sources.

Individual and group decision making are both beneficial within an organization, however, there are critical decisions to make that either individual or group may not be able to make without relying on others or one's own ability to make pertinent decisions based on analytics and critical thinking. It is believed that when dealing with a group the old cliché holds true such as; "too many chiefs and not enough Indians." Oftentimes, there is a possibility that division may arise due to various personality characteristics and/or traits that does not always cause individual to move forward on one accord. Each member will have their own ideas about forward movement and may not always agree with the direction, policies, vision, mission, or how to complete a task. In essence, some group members disagree just to be disagreeable, when this occurs, members within a group may have to develop a method of compromise in an effort to meet the main objective. With the emerging need of groups to fulfill obligations comes an overwhelming increase in strong overbearing personalities members often conduct mental interoffice competitiveness in order to demonstrate which member possesses more knowledge about a subject and which member has the ability to execute task fulfillment in accordance with organizational expectations. From a personal perspective I have been fortunate enough to benefit from both entities (individual and group decision making). An individual who must make pertinent decisions takes on more of a leadership role within an organization, in fact subordinates, employees, etc. often looks to this type of individual for guidance and direction, whereas a group's sole purpose is reaching a consensus as to how to proceed with a particular project within a specific time period. One thing I've gathered from functioning as a group is that members are advantageous enough to rely on other members of the group if one member is weaker in a specific area than some of the stronger members. A group member can sometimes find the answers to the most difficult questions within the group without searching outside sources for the answer. Whereas an individual will not be privy to the answers found within the group, instead, he/she must rely on his/her ability to find answers to the most difficult questions and may have to fulfill organizational obligations by a specific deadline in which case the workload may be extensive; this type of scenario may lead to an individual feeling overworked, undervalued and not able to meet overwhelming demand solitarily.
"Decision styles. Regardless of the nature of the problem, an individual will usually pay more attention to either quality or acceptance. The proportion of these two factors in the decision-making process determines the decision style to be used. The four styles described by the model follow:

? Command. Using the available information, the leader makes a decision without involving the person or persons who ultimately will be executing it.

? Consensus. Those affected by the decision are brought together; a group decision evolves from shared information or ideas. The choice is acceptable in some degree to all group members (Roseman, 1995).

? Consultation. The leader makes the decision after consulting with individuals but without bringing them together as a group.

? Convenience. The leader chooses whatever method is easiest at the time the decision is required. No special consideration is given to finding the best method.

? Command or convenience. Many laboratory supervisors rely on command and convenience decision styles. While these styles produce quick decisions when there are limited options, they're not practical for decisions for which the options are unclear, when there are many different choices, or when acceptance is an important consideration." (Roseman, 1995).

"Bounded awareness, described by Max Bazerman and Dolly Chugh, refers to the well-documented observation that people routinely overlook important information during the decision-making process. One cause is our tendency to become overly focused. Focus limits awareness, and important information outside the range of focus can be missed. Thus, an airplane pilot attending to his controls can overlook the presence of another airplane on the runway. Cell phones can distract drivers and contribute to car accidents."(Merkhofer, 2002).

In some cases, the smallest piece of information may be overlooked with individuals as opposed to groups for the reason that a group may have several individual reviewing information with a fine toothed comb, for example, in the police department every crime is thoroughly investigated by a team of individuals from various aspects of the case from beginning to end. Each department plays a significant role in solving the case, in this case a group will be more beneficial to reaching the main objective instead of an individual who may miss pertinent information.

Reference
Merkhofer, L. (2002) Bounded Awareness and Decision Making Heuristics. Retrieved February 2, 2011 from http://www.prioritysystem.com/reasons1c.html

Roseman, E. (1995) The Individual vs. Group Approach to Decision Making. Retrieved February 2, 2011 from http://www.allbusiness.com/health-care-social-assistance/ambulatory-health-services/493679-1.html

3. Discuss the following statement. "It is important that organizational managers understand that bounded awareness can and will occur in decision making."

Bounded awareness is inevitable in decision making this is why it is important to understand the importance and significance of utilizing additional resources and appointing various individuals to review current information in order to ensure that nothing has been overlooked. For example, all organizations should incorporate periodic audits. Although and audit is specifically related to accounting procedures, an audit by definition is the act of inspecting information for validity, relevance, and accuracy. "Regardless as to the type of audit, it should be assumed that an audit will be performed without bias." (Smith, 2011). Organizational managers must work towards developing methods that are geared specifically to reviewing and re-reviewing information. For instance, an author who writes novels cannot completely rely on his/her editing ability before publishing his/her masterpiece of literature because mistakes, errors, overuse, and/misuse of wording or the overabundance of wordiness may occur. Therefore, an author may have a group of individuals in place to review his/her manuscript for all potential grammatical errors before the novel goes to print. The author, for instance, poses as his/her own organizational manager and already understands that bounded awareness is a prerequisite for ensuring efficiency in which case additional assistance is needed to ensure total quality management (TQM).

4. Discuss how groupthink might have created decision-making problems for NASA and its booster contractor. Cite at least two sources in your answer.

During the time, NASA was under extreme pressure to follow through with the launch of Challenger. Consequently, all of the possible warning signs were present. Groupthink enabled ...

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