Business Decision Making Report: Evaluating Decisions from Weeks 3-6

This report delves into the intricacies of business decision-making, exploring various models and their applications. It begins by examining Osmani's eight factors of group effectiveness, emphasizing the importance of problem identification, research, solution development, and evaluation. The report then analyzes the optimal group size for effective decision-making, highlighting the significance of social sensitivity and emotional intelligence. Furthermore, it discusses the use of simulation in manufacturing organizations, such as Conroy Company, outlining the benefits and challenges associated with this tool. The report also provides recommendations for investing in simulation to improve training and product design. Finally, it reflects on personal experiences in decision-making, using a decision quality checklist to evaluate biases and propose improvements for future decisions, referencing relevant academic literature.

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Business Decision Making
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Week 3
Applicability of Osmani’s 8 factors of the group effectiveness.
Making an important decision and moving forward is the right thing for any organisation. There
is various decision-making model, one of the most of them is breaking decision making through
eight steps (Ferrell and Fraedrich, 2015).
Identifying the problem.
Before making an essential decision in the organisation, the best thing is to analyse what it is that
is prompting individual actions and make sure that that making decision sees the whole picture
by stating the problem objectively (Zsambok, 2014).
Considering the nature of the problem.
It is essential to consider the situation one is addressing the problem that is facing the
organisation (Ferrell and Fraedrich, 2015). The next thing is to ask why the organisation needs
that particular solution.
Researching the problem.
Once the organization understand the issue, it is essential to find more data to address the
situation. It would be difficult to make informed decision to once best interest.
Developing the solutions.
Once making the decision, it is essential to keep in mind that most of the problems have more
than one solution. It is vital to consider various ways to address the situation since each could
have a different outcome.

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Listing the pros and cons
For each of the significant decision, the organisation is making it is essential to list all the pros
and cons and try to do this while thinking through the long-term consequences of each choice.
Selecting the best approach
When the organisation is making the decisions, it is essential to examine every possible solution
with their pros and cons and decide which is the most effective as well as beneficial.
Executing the choice
When the organisation has identified and chosen the solution from all the possible options, it is
essential to put it into action.
Evaluation and communication
When a decision has been identified it is important to reflect and seek the other individual’s
opinions once you have followed through one's choices.
Optimum group size for effective decision making
The optimum group size for an effective decision making is five members. These individuals
access the impact of the group process and performance for the various kind of the tasks.
Implications and recommendations for current practice.
This number is too small for the best result on undertaking all the task within a group. This will
have an impact on the decision which the team will make and it will not be effective. The
recommendation is to have a group of at least seven members as the minimum. Social sensitivity

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and reading emotions are the two attributes for successful decision making in a team.
Considering the number and the members of a group is essential.
Week 4
a) All the three machines will be out of action?
Given that P (A) = 0.1, P (B) =0.05, (C) = 0.2. The probability the three machines will be out of
action is P (AnBnC) = 0.1*0.05*0.2= 0.001.
b) None of the machines will be out of action?
P (0 machine) = (1-0.1) *(1-0.05) * (1-0.2) = 0.684.
Week 5
Potential applications in the organization.
Simulation has been a helpful and valuable work tool which has been utilized in manufacturing
organisation such as Conroy Company. The simulation has been used in the system behaviour
which is to be learnt and tested. One area of the application has been in the automating the
manufacturing process to develop an efficient and effective method to ensure that the system
throughput (Hartman, DesJardins & MacDonald, 2014). There are various issues in which the
simulation will be used to address in this manufacturing company. One area would be on the
number and type of the machines for a given objective. Additionally, it would be of nature and
the physical arrangement of the transporters, and other support equipment in the organisation.
Benefits and challenges of simulation.
Benefits

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The use of the simulation has been employed in this organisation to check out as well as validate
the process of the automation systems, perform software acceptance tests as well as train the
operators in providing different benefit to the organisation.
The use of the simulation provides a low cost, secure and a fast analysis tool. Further, it offers
benefits that are reached with various systems configuration. Simulation has been found to
provide substantial benefits to the business. The direct benefit of the simulator is difficult for one
to ascertain (Hartman, DesJardins & MacDonald, 2014). The saving associated with this are
reduced the cost of training, cost caused by the environmental excursions, damage to equipment
as well as improved availability of the plant.
The simulation also helps to improve on the ROI from the simulation systems which are within
Conroy organisation. The users are adopting the best practices to implement the automation
system testing as well as training (Pettigrew, 2014). To be able to reduce o the commissioning
time and the cost, developing of the simulation model, testing, as well as training, are becoming
the integral aspect when it comes to the overall automation of the project life cycle within this
organisation.
Challenges
Simulation cost low, but there is a high level of skepticism in the Company. As compared to the
cost of the experimenting in the real world, utilizing simulation entails very little time as well as
resources. Nonetheless, the challenge to this approach is that some of the organization today they
are skeptical in regards to the simulation (Hartman, DesJardins & MacDonald, 2014). Most of
the analysis today are based on the reporting as well as building the deterministic statistical
models used to describe what occurred previously.

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Recommendation in investing in simulation.
The business should invest in simulation since it provide an interactive learning experience
which entails the participants to apply what they have learnt in the business training event into
the robust and risk free environment (Ferrell and Fraedrich, 2015). Individuals are able to build
relevant skills, improve on the conceptual knowledge as well as a gain to better appreciation of
the business strategy and the system of the business management to build skills and improve
performance.
The simulation tools can be the right product in the design improvement. There could be
instances when the product could encounter higher failure rates than expected (Zsambok, 2014).
This could be due to the miscalculated fatigue life or any unseen flaw in the design, with the
finite element analysis, product design could be evaluated and any flaw in the design could be
recognized. Additionally, the use of the simulation could help reduce the production cost
(Ferrell and Fraedrich, 2015). The cost of the conventional product development cycle could be
reduced significantly through realizing the product potential early during the design phase itself
through use of the simulation (Zsambok, 2014. Alternative design might be visualized without
building the prototype and the cost effective design could be finalized.
Week 6
Decision in which I have been involved.
There are various decision in which I have been involved in the organisation which I work some
of this decision are; selecting the packaging for the new product. In the organisation, we were
choosing a new packaging for a product we were launching (García-Peñalvo and Conde, 2014).
The decision was made based on the analysed data from the various focus groups. Another

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choice I was involved in was comparing the strengths and the weaknesses of three potential
vendors to process the payroll.
Decision quality checklist
Checking for self-interest biases
Before making the decision, i examined any reason to suspect the team from making any given
error. There were no errors in the analysis of the best decision to make.
Checking the Affected Heuristic
The team had fallen in love with the proposal which was provided by the vendors who were to
supply the payroll system which the organization was intending to acquire.
Checking for the Groupthink
The team raised various opinion in regards to the best alternative to take from the available
options. There were dissenting views on the best decision, but at the end, we were able to
recommend the best opportunity to the company (Ford and Richardson, 2013).
Checking for the saliency bias
The diagnosis of the problem which the organisation was encountering was overly impacted by
the analogy to the notable success.
How to improve in the future decision.
One way to improve the future decision making is to check for the Halo effect. The organization
need to eliminate any the false interferences and ask the team members in seeking for additional
comparable examples of the similar decision that have been made for the same problem.

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References
Ferrell, O.C. and Fraedrich, J., 2015. Business ethics: Ethical decision making & cases. Nelson
Education.
Ford, R.C. and Richardson, W.D., 2013. Ethical decision making: A review of the empirical
literature. In Citation classics from the Journal of Business Ethics (pp. 19-44). Springer
Netherlands.
García-Peñalvo, F.J. and Conde, M.Á., 2014. Using informal learning for business decision
making and knowledge management. Journal of Business Research, 67(5), pp.686-691.
Hartman, L. P., DesJardins, J. R., & MacDonald, C. (2014). Business ethics: Decision making
for personal integrity and social responsibility. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Pettigrew, A.M., 2014. The politics of organizational decision-making. Routledge.
Zsambok, C.E., 2014. Naturalistic decision making. Psychology Press.