- Q1.Pick a decision that you have made recently that has had important consequences for you. This decision may be your decision, on which college to attend, which major to select, which part-time job to take, or even whether or not to take a part-time job. Using the study materials in ‘Decision making’, analyze the way in which you made the decision:
a Identify the criteria you used, either consciously or unconsciously, to guide your decision making.
b List the alternatives that you considered. Were these all the possible alternatives? Did you unconsciously (or consciously) ignore some important alternatives?
c How much information did you have about each alternative? Did you base the decision on complete or incomplete information?
d Try to remember how you reached a decision. Did you sit down and consciously think through the implications of each alternative, or did you make a decision on the basis of intuition? Did you use any rules of thumb to help you make the decision?
e Having answered those four questions, do you think in retrospect that you made a reasonable decision? What, if anything, might you do to improve your ability to make good decisions in the future?
Q2 You have been hired to reorganize and redesign the Mook Shoes Corporation, which has sold a single product line — women’s dress shoes— for over four decades. It is a traditional tall organization with authority at the top (where the CEO is a former shoe designer) and a functional structure of sales, design, marketing, customer relations, human resources, finance, accounting and production. In recent years, sales have been falling off because the styles in women’s shoes have changed. You are required to propose how a new organization structure might help to avoid a further drop in sales.
