Business Decision Making and Analysis Report - University Assignment

This report analyzes the business decision-making process within the context of Pearls & Boheme, a jewelry retail business. It explores both strategic and operational decision-making levels, highlighting the challenges faced by the sole owner, Brigitte. The report delves into the importance of employee and customer involvement, comparing qualitative and quantitative decision-making approaches. It examines the nature of problems, differentiating between tame and wicked issues, and discusses the application of the Williams Rational Problem Solving Approach. The analysis covers various aspects of decision-making, including criteria for product and customer service evaluations, and the impact of decisions on the business's success. The report emphasizes the need for a review of the current decision-making processes to address the limitations of sole ownership and improve the business's strategic and operational effectiveness.

Running head: BUSINESS DECISION MAKING AND ANALYSIS
Business Decision Making and Analysis
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

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BUSINESS DECISION MAKING AND ANALYSIS
Introduction
There are different kinds of difficulties included in the organizational decision making
procedure. Within the organizational decision making procedure, all the stakeholders are
involved whereas the impact of the decision making is widespread. In other words, the
organizational decision making process is the procedure of making the comparatively
favorable choice amongst the other alternatives. Zsambok (2014) agree to that fact that the
decision making within the organizations is one of the most significant management
activities. Also, it is important to note that, only the managers are not responsible for the
decision making process, but at every level the employees also contribute in the process of
the decision making. Even though most of the cases, it is believed that the senior
management make the decision, in the contemporary organizations, most of the decisions are
made by the teams or the groups at the initial stage (Pettigrew 2014). This essay will trigger
the decision making activities at both the strategic and operational level along with the
problems being dealt at each of the levels.
Background
Pearls & Boheme is a mid-sized jewelry retail business which is operated by a sole
owner, Brigitte. The organization has employees such as sales managers, sales assistants as
other stakeholders, but Brigitte is the only one who has been responsible for all the past
decisions that have been taken so far. Brigitte is also responsible for creating and designing
the jewelry other than handling the other aspects of the business such as advertizing, finance
and sales. This issue has been a major problem in the organization as there is no other person
involved while taking any significant decision. Even though there are several advantages of
being a sole owner of any business such as making fast decisions or lower cost of employee
management, sole ownership also comes with several disadvantages. Brigitte is the only one

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who should take the entire financial liability, therefore if there is any kind of business failure
or other issues such as property damage or injured client, there is no one to make major
decisions to manage the further consequences. In addition to that, the business can stop if
Brigitte falls sick or not capable to work for any other reasons. Therefore the organization
needs to stop doing business for a while. Therefore Pearls & Boheme requires to review its
decision making process for the further strategic and operational decisions.
Decision Making
Organizational decision making is a procedure which can be of different types on the
basis of the issues that arise. At the very first stage, the management requires to identify the
specific issue because evaluating the issue would help the owner to judge all the aspects.
After that, the manager should analyze the issue by utilizing the multiple perspective analysis
as this will make the management to think out of their own perspective (Hartman, DesJardins
and MacDonald 2014). According to the size and nature of the business, the decision making
process of every organization tends to change. As the vision of Pearl & Boheme is “to make
profit through doing what Pearls & Boheme is best at”, the organization aims to gain the
competitive advantage by making distinctly different products than the other businesses in the
market. While making any decision, the goal should be focused with utmost priority.
Employee involvement
In Pearls & Boheme, there is no such formal meeting for the strategic decision
making held. As it is a company for sole partnership, most of the decisions are taken by
Brigitte on the basis of her years of experience and practice in the business world. Therefore,
she utilizes her knowledge on the environmental factors and her business judgment for
identifying the problem. However, it is significant for Pearls & Boheme that there are two
part time employees who are responsible for putting inputs at the strategic and operational

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decision making process. Even though Brigitte is the last word in the organization, she
prefers consulting with others before taking any final decision.
Customer participation
On an operational level, customer participation is most important for Pearls &
Boheme for creating long-term customer relationships. Therefore, the organization can
introduce few customer loyalty programs which will help them to retail more clients in the
long run.
Sole decision making
Along with that, past experiences in the business filed allow Brigitte recognizing the
issue along with the cause, and therefore she makes the rational or intuitive decision after
analyzing all the aspects of the issue. Brigitte takes all the major decisions by herself,
therefore in most of the situations there is no meeting before taking any strategic or
operational decisions. As explained by (), the organization follows the rule of taking steps
immediately when known what is to be done. Therefore Brigitte takes immediate decisions
and takes actions. The below figure demonstrates the way of making decisions for the
business.

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Operational Decisions
Operational decisions are the ones which are made for managing the daily business
within any organization. Mostly, these decisions are taken care of by the floor manager or the
operations manager. It may sound easy; however there are thousands of decisions in the
business on a regular basis (Shouzhen et al. 2014). The most significant thing about the day
to day operational decisions is that, if it is not taken properly, it can destroy the regular
service for the customers. As Pearls & Boheme’s is a sole partnership, Brigitte has to deal
with all the regular issues by herself. She is often confronted with repetitive issues which
involves different objectives such as deciding the material for a particular design, choosing
the supplier for the business purpose or employee selection. Along with that, customer
service is one of the major decision making procedure in the organization. It is also to be
decided that a jewellery has been finished or fixing the pricing strategy (Solomon 2014).
Being a sole owner, Brigitte has to do the entire job on her own. Pearls & Boheme also faced
customer negotiations and the decisions that are related to the creation and designing of the
jewellery where the decisions regarding creation of jewellery and the price of the piece
requires to be decided.
Strategic Decisions
 Strategic decision making is an ongoing procedure. This process includes creating
new strategies for achieving the objectives and goals on the basis of the experiential
outcome. For this reason the management has to work together towards its mission
and vision statement.
 An analysis of the external and internal factors such as SWOT analysis can help the
managers to achieve the objectives of the organization. If the management has a clear
idea of the strengths and weaknesses of the organization, it is easier for them to make

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a decision where they can exploit the strengths while minimizing the weakness for
avoiding the threats (Goetsch and Davis 2014).
 In Pearls & Boheme’s, the main objective of the brand is to become one of the leading
jewelry businesses in Australia, therefore the organization always work together in
fulfilling the expectations of the customers providing them unique and innovative
jewelry. Therefore the organization works harder to provide more artistic and unique
designs to the customers.
 The decision of relocation of the business has been taken recently. This decision has
made the organization bigger and the better location has proven it to be a successful
strategic decision.
Nature of the problems
There are different kinds of problems for Pearls & Boheme’s on a daily basis. The
owner of the organization has to face several issues everyday and these problems are quite
difficult to analyze and solve as most of the times, they are contradictory, incomplete and
keep on changing the previous requirements. Mostly these issues are interdependent as while
solving one issue at a time can create or reveal issues from another aspect (Rittel and Webber
1973). There are two kinds of problems faced by the organization, tame and wicked.
According to Richey (2005) the characteristics of tame problems are
1. It has a relatively well-defined and stable problem statement.
2. It has a definite stopping point, i.e. we know when a solution is reached.
3. It has a solution which can be objectively evaluated as being right or wrong.
4. It belongs to a class of similar problems which can be solved in a similar manner.

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5. It has solutions which can be tried and abandoned.
The characteristics of wicked problems are:
1. There is no definitive formulation of a wicked problem
2. Have no stopping rule
3. Solutions not true or false but good or bad
4. No immediate and no ultimate test of a solution
5. Every solution is a one shot – no opportunity to learn by trial and error
6. Enumerable potential solutions
7. Essentially unique
8. Can be considered a symptom of another problem
9. Existence of discrepancy explained in numerous ways
10. Planner has no right to be wrong
For example, last month the organization has faced an issue with a customer who has
been changing the requirements continuously, therefore it was difficult for the employees to
follow her and provide her the kind of jewelry that pleases her. However when the design
matched, she started complaining about the material that has been used. Therefore the
manager has faced complicated issues with her as she kept on pointing out different issues
with the piece of jewelry. Also there was another internal problem to it, as the employees
were not willing to do the entire job on free of cost as they have already put adequate effort
for this piece of jewelry. Therefore, Brigitte has to talk to the customer and after a long
period of discussions, the customer has agreed on a decision and was ready to pay extra for

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the further changes. Therefore, it can be said that the even if the problems are difficult thee
organization has to come to a solution which does not harm neither the employees nor the
customers.
Decision making Approach
 There are two different kinds of decision making approaches by the organizations all
over the world, qualitative and quantitative. As a sole owner of the organization,
Brigitte has to take the final decision after ensuring that all the aspects of the issue
have been addressed.
 There are few basic differences in both the methods. In terms of qualitative method,
the inputs are mostly non-measurable, however, with qualitative method the managers
have to deal with the gathered data. Qualitative method also includes a profound
insight on the information; however the quantitative data is mostly mechanical and
only provides the statistical analysis of the gathered data (Anderson et al. 2015).
 The manager can calculate the rate of facing issues with a particular product but they
cannot judge how much the customers are pleased with the product. Along with that,
the researchers have also observed that the results of the qualitative analysis may be
ambiguous sometimes, but the results of the quantitative analysis can be decisive. In
this organization, the owner mostly makes qualitative decision making approach to
reach to a solution (Goodwin and Wright 2014).
 First, the problem needs to be identified reviewing various aspects. After that the
criteria of suitable judgment needs to be decided. After a detailed evaluation and
judgment procedure, the solution should be implemented immediately.
Criteria before making any decision (regarding Weigh (1-10)

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products)
Price of the product 8
User friendly 9
Cost effectiveness 8
Structural description 8
Criteria (customer service) Weight (1-10)
Delivery timing 10
Attitude of the employee 8
Flexibility of exchanging the product 6
CSR 9
Williams Rational Problem Solving Approach
This approach has various stages, such as:
 At the first stage the specific problem has to be defined in an unambiguous way.
 After that the decision criteria can be decided.
 The third stage is to weight the criteria which will eventually generate the alternatives
after the alternatives for the solution.
 After rating each of the alternatives on the criteria, the management has to come to an
optimal decision (Goetsch and Davis 2014).
 This tool helps to accommodate all the potential aspects which is related to the
decision making approach.
The assumptions are:
• Problem is clear and unambiguous

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• Single and well-defined goals can be identified
• Alternatives (and consequences) are all known
• Preferences and needs are clear, recognised, and unchanging
• Time and resources are abundant & accessible
• Decision will be implemented willingly and supported by all
Conclusion and Recommendation
In recommendation, it can be said that, in Pearls & Boheme’s, the owner should get
another members in the management which will make her job easier. Till now, she has been
the only one who has been responsible for the decisions. This also includes taking fast and
prompt decisions, whereas on the other hand it comes with several problems such as if she
falls sick, there is no one to take care of the business. Therefore the organization should
appoint other members in the senior management as well.

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