Argumentative Essay: Managing Under Uncertainty

Running head: MANAGING UNDER UNCERTAINTY
ARGUMENTATIVE ESSAY: MANAGING UNDER UNCERTAINTY
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MANAGING UNDER UNCERTAINTY
Proposition: ‘Technology plays no role in decision making under turbulent business
environment’
Introduction
Decision making in any business is one of the most crucial jobs for the managers.
Especially, when the business environment is turbulent or uncertain, the decision making job is
all the more difficult as in a turbulent or uncertain environment, the managers are often not
equipped with complete, reliable and sufficient information which would help them to evaluate
the scenario and take appropriate decisions (Beard, 2018). Everything in a business is in a state
of flux in a turbulent business environment and there exist numerous random and external forces
which make the environment unpredictable. According to the decision-making theories, the
managers can adopt any of the models, that is, rational or classical model, administrative or
bounded rationality model and retrospective decision making model, as per the need of the
business situation (Mintz, 2016). However, the fundamental of all these theories are that the
managers must possess a strong sense of judgment and rationality to make appropriate, sensible
and ethical decision in a business. Along with that capability, in many cases, technology plays a
very significant role in assisting the managers in decision making. However, in case of
uncertainty, the role of technology in assisting in the decision making process is debatable. The
following essay will present an argumentative discussion on the proposition that ‘Technology
plays no role in decision making under turbulent or uncertain business environment’. The essay
will contain discussion for and against and around the proposition with supportive literature to
evaluate the role of technology in decision making process in a turbulent business environment.

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MANAGING UNDER UNCERTAINTY
Discussion
Arguments in favor of the proposition
Decision-making in a business can be defined as the process of selecting a choice among
a set of alternatives to meet the business objectives or to arrive at a specific solution to a business
problem and this choice of an option is based on various factors of the business, such as,
resources and capabilities, business performance, market structure and size, technology, growth
potential etc. (Black, 2019). The activity of decision making is highly dynamic as the business
environment. As highlighted by Newbert & Craig (2017), a decision making process must
include as much as information available, which not only has to be reliable, but also should be
adequate to understand the potential impact of the decision on the business. However, in an
uncertain business environment, the managers lack access to the proper and accurate
information, and in many cases the sources of information are often unreliable. In such cases, the
decision making process not only becomes challenging, but the outcome also has higher chances
of being incorrect.
Technology plays significant role in providing logical solution to a problem, however,
any software used in decision making depends completely on data or information available.
Machines are capable of applying statistical or mathematical functions on the available
information and if the sources of the data are unreliable, and the information is not complete,
adequate or correct, then the chances of error in the outcome go up considerably. Henceforth, the
technology is useful for decision making only in case of certain business environment, when the
available information are reliable and correct. In such cases, the managers can use large,
complete and correct datasets to perform business analytics and that generates precise outcome