Decision Making Under Pressure: Research Proposal for BUSN20016

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This research proposal examines the impact of pressure on decision-making within global business organizations. It identifies the problem of increasing competitive environments and the challenges faced by managers in making strategic decisions under time constraints and uncertainty. The proposal outlines research aims and objectives, including exploring the relationship between time pressure, human judgment, and decision-making, as well as the impact of these factors on business performance and globalization. A conceptual framework is presented, highlighting key variables such as pressure levels, performance, decision strategy, task difficulty, and goal commitment. The proposal also includes a brief overview of the research methodology, data sources, and data analysis methods to be employed in the study. It aims to provide insights into how managers can make effective decisions under pressure and mitigate risks in dynamic business environments. Desklib offers a wealth of resources, including solved assignments and past papers, to support students in their academic endeavors.
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Running head: DECISION MAKING UNDER PRESSURE
Decision Making under Pressure
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note
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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Problem statement...........................................................................................................................3
Research Aim and objectives...........................................................................................................4
Research Questions..........................................................................................................................5
Justification and potential output of the research project................................................................6
Conceptual framework.....................................................................................................................6
Development of hypothesis.............................................................................................................9
A brief research Methodology.......................................................................................................10
Secondary Data and Data analysis method....................................................................................13
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................13
References......................................................................................................................................14
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2DECISION MAKING UNDER PRESSURE
Introduction
The present research proposal intends to analyze on the decision-making under pressure.
Decision making relates to choices among other courses of action that might also involve
inaction (Smith, 2014). Since every decisions include few element of risk, stress or pressure has
critical influence on quality of decisions (Flyvbjerg, 2013). Rising effectiveness in business
decision- making is a vital part of maximizing effectiveness in work. In the present accelerating
business world along with ever enhancing value of time, several decisions are done under huge
time pressure. The organizations frequently face unfavorable environments that exerts huge
institutional pressures limiting their behavior and business decision making and grasp
institutional voids that needs them to reimburse missing institutions. Every situation of decision
making includes some extent of uncertainty and the managers of the enterprise face judgments
relating to uncertainties. Uncertainties mainly exists where every possible consequences of event
are unknown and other associated outcomes are uncertain (Betsch, 2014). The managers of an
enterprise are required to have proper knowledge about risk assessment in order to move out
from uncertain circumstances within the business. The outcome of risk assessment has been
used to provide information for decision making on requirement to introduce measures of risk
reduction.
The cognitive science identified that psychological stress or pressure exceeding specific
intensity influence the decision making quality. Under certain situations encountered in
managerial or business conditions, decision making is basically studied in forms of stressors such
as overload of information and time pressure. The impact of time pressure on personal decision
making can reduce quality of activities and change risk preferences. Several studies have
reflected that decision support systems can help the users in these circumstances and thus
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improve quality of decision making (Shepherd & Rudd, 2014). The first section of this project
proposal provides an overview on the problem statement, research aims and objectives, research
questions, potential output and justification of this project. The second section of this study
reviews on the literature and also focuses on the methods to be adopted for conducting this
research. The last section highlights on the data analysis method that will be integrated for this
study.
Problem statement
The business organizations across the globe have been facing continuous change in
operations owing to rising competitive business environment. In today’s world, competitive
advantage is developed by transferring as well as exploiting competencies across enterprise
business operations. However, the enterprises are- now- days getting huge opportunities for
business growth and having extra benefit of expanding their business in international nations.
Recent evidences reflect that global change in business enterprises has created several challenges
to the managers since they have to manage both domestic and foreign competitions. The
management of the enterprise adopts policies as well as framework where they mainly
experience mental framework in the business decision making. Moreover, huge pressure while
making business decisions play vital role in shaping business strategies.
Several facts reflect that the managers and leaders of the business enterprise face risks
that are connected with change in business strategies. This is because the HRM managers
adopting strategies in business are mainly dependent upon their decision making. Even though
there might be different causes behind change, inefficiency and barriers in business decision
making under stress or pressure might affect its operations and performance. The employees of
the business enterprise also experiences time pressure while performing in group work. Decision
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making behavior has significantly affected by environmental dynamics as most dynamic
conditions holds such uncertainty (Knights et al., 2014). In many situations, the decision makers
has to make temporal changes into account owing to change in dynamic situation. Moreover,
decision maker in few cases use feedback on the impact of an individual’s action on system
(Pettigrew, 2014). As the managers takes decision under pressure, the outcome of decision are
sometimes not considered and hence the information is not used in proper decisions. In addition
to this, while dealing with uncertainty of continuous changing business environment, the
decision maker can achieve trade- off between action cost and risk of non- action. The researcher
have inspected different practices that influence power of decision making but several
researchers botched to ascertain relationship and real outcomes. The determination of impact of
time pressure as well as individual judgment on business decision making power and liaison
between them indicates the problem statement of this study.
Research Aim and objectives
The main aim of this specific research proposal is to analyze how business decision
making affects growth and performance of the global enterprise (Orquin & Loose, 2013). The
research study also focuses on how the managers or leaders of the organization have flexibility in
business decision making. The purpose of this research is to show the managers how to make
novel choices that might adopted by the world leaders for the innovative change with less bad
effects. The sub- objectives of this research proposal are described below-
To recognize the relation between time pressure, decision making and human beings
judgments on the personals.
To explore the impact of human judgment and pressure on the business decision making
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To find out the decision made by the managers under time pressure affects procedure of
globalization of the foreign firms.
To develop different ways by which the decision- making procedure within an
organization are done under flexible working conditions
To explore the impact of human judgment as well as pressure on the decision making of
the individuals.
To provide proper examples of the foreign firms that had mainly faced failures in
business owing to fiasco in the strategic business decision making.
Research Questions
The primary question that will arise from this research proposal is –
Do the decision making by the business leaders under pressure influences the
performance and growth of the business?
The secondary research questions are stated below-
If the managers making decisions under pressure lead to inaccurate outcomes of the
business activities?
What is the best approach for critical decision making under huge pressure?
Do implementation of effective strategies helps the managers of an enterprise to make
appropriate decision making under pressure?
Do managers changes their emotional state of mind while making decisions under
pressure?
Does pressure acts as hindrance and challenge in the managerial decision making
situations?
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Justification and potential output of the research project
The potential output of this research proposal is that pressure directly influences decision
making process within the business. It can be evident from several facts that the business leaders
of the organizations employing various strategies in making decisions under pressure might lead
to positive outcome. The research will also focus on the fact that the decision makers will be
used to adapt with the time- pressured circumstances (Aruldoss, Lakshmi & Venkatesan, 2013).
This in turn will benefit them to make effective decision making under difficult situations within
the business. Under low pressure, the decision makers can perform in better way by taking
proper decisions when both information presentation as well as task have similar type of
processing. On the other hand, increased pressure might create increase in difficulties and risks
during their decision making process. The decision maker under increased pressure might try to
decrease cognitive load by utilizing similar strategy that is emphasized by information presented
and task. Moreover, different information systems can aid the decision makers of the business
enterprises to make proper decisions under huge pressure. Information systems aid the managers
to attain proper information relating to business activities, which in turn can help them to make
informed decisions. As the process of decision making are data intensive, the decision making
tools or information systems can facilitate the business leaders to have two or more options
available while making decision under pressure (Clemen & Reilly, 2013). Thus, the managers
can avoid risk and uncertainty from the business decisions taken by them under pressure.
Conceptual framework
The conceptual framework of the decision-making under pressure is described below-
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Pressure Difficulty in
task
Goal
Commitment
Performance
Decision-
strategy
Information
systems
Decision
making tools
The above model reflects the impact of pressure on business decision making. The
detailed discussion on the mentioned variables are given below-
Pressure- Pressure is usually of two levels – low and high. High pressure groups are provided
one-half of time amount while low pressure groups are given time limit that is considered to be
sufficient. It has been evident from prior research that varying pressure or time constraints might
have direct impact on task performance. Varying extent of pressure might be manifested by
change in business activities, which in turn results in performance variations. Moreover, the
characteristics of task or business activities likely varies through changing time pressures.
However, the managers might change their decisions owing to change in task activities. As a
result, performance difference among the managers occur due to change in task characteristics
under varying pressure levels (Oshima Lee & Emanuel, 2015) Also, if these two pressure levels
are to be utilized, pressure can be manipulated so that the managers can take proper decisions
regarding any business activities.
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Performance- Petkova et al. (2014) opines that decision performance has been predicted to
suffer owing to increase in pressure. Few evidences reflect that there are certain circumstances
where rise in pressure is associated with better performance. In addition to this, the decision
performance taken by HR managers apt to increase with rise in pressure but fall off when time
pressure becomes severe. Therefore, the research findings reflect that rising pressure up to
specific point leads to better decision performance but beyond that pressure might reduce its
performance. Moreover, decline in decision making performance might also occur due to
decision strategy (Schoemaker, 2013).
Decision strategy- Maddi (2013) found that the decision makers usually adopt simplifying
strategies during high pressure. The quality of decision might decline owing to increase in time
pressure. Pressure might outcome in selection of suboptimal decision strategy, which in turn can
cause decline in performance. The decision maker being conscious about worse outcome can be
highly conservative as well as sensitive to information. However, the decision maker can make
effective decision strategies regarding change in business activities due to pressure (Hammond,
Keeney & Raiffa 2015).
Task difficulty- It refers to extent of cognitive load or mental effort that is needed to recognize
the problem solution. For pressure to have effect on decision strategy selection, it should be
strong enough for making considerable change in task. Romiszowski (2016) opines that
complexity in tasks can change due to changing pressure. Rising pressure generally enhances
difficulty in business tasks rather than complexity in tasks. The objective measurement of task
difficulty is generally obtained when poor performance or decision time is observed. As time
pressure causes increase in difficulty of tasks or business activities, it creates difficulty for the
managers to make decisions relating to completion of these activities. Moreover, highly difficult
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task or activities in business might force the managers to choose suboptimal decision strategy,
which could then reduce performance.
Goal commitment- The two goal aspects are directly related to decision performance that
includes- goal commitment and individual goal level. Both these goal levels and commitments
are mainly subject to influence of different personal as well as situational factors. Moreover,
complexity of tasks have been considered as one of the determinants of the goal commitment. In
fact, difficulty in task has been directly related to the goal commitments. Apparently, challenge
of task difficulty raises an individual’s determination to attain goals but demands of task
complexity declines commitment. However, the decision making of the business managers is
highly influenced by the goal commitments under pressure (Plataniotis, de Kinderen & Proper,
2013).
Information systems-The main role of information systems or decision making tools is to
counteract adverse effect of time pressure on the decision strategy performance. Laudon and
Laudon (2016) found out that information systems led the HR managers to make decisions in
less time. During high pressure, the utilization of information systems facilitates the managers to
attain accurate data relating to projects or employees work. This in turn helps them to make
effective decisions in case of complex situations in business (Waas et al., 2014).
Development of hypothesis
In light of literature review, this research proposal will test the proposed hypothesis given below-
Hypothesis 1
Null Hypothesis-Time pressure do not directly influence the decision- making process
Alternative Hypothesis-Time pressure directly influence the decision making procedure
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Hypothesis 2
Null hypothesis-There is no significant correlation between decision- making by managers under
pressure and business performance
Alternative hypothesis- There is significant correlation between decision-making by managers
under pressure and business performance.
A brief research Methodology
Different methods will be integrated for conducting this particular research study. The
various tools that will be adopted for this research are- descriptive research design, positivism
philosophy, deductive approach, secondary collection method and random sampling technique.
For finding out the main causes behind which the HR managers of an organization make
decisions under pressure and also to understand its impact on business growth, secondary data
collection method will be used for conducting research on this topic.
Literature Review- This section of the research reviews on the literature relating to
impact of pressure on business decision making. The sources from where the data has
been collected for reviewing literature are journal articles, books, company’s website and
other articles. Several articles will provide the evidences regarding the fact that decision
making under pressure directly affects the enterprise performance. The study will provide
an overview on how the HR managers of the organizations change their decisions relating
to change in business activities under time pressure (Johnson et al., 2013). The literature
review section will focus on how the leaders of the corporations implement strategies in
making effective decisions under pressure. In addition to this, the articles will also help to
highlight on the evidences on how the HR managers obtain large amount of data through
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information systems in relatively short time period while making decisions under
pressure or complex situations. The secondary source of data will also reflect on different
factors that influence the managers of an organization to make business decision under
pressure (De Jong & Gardner, 2013).
Research Design- It is mainly of three types, namely- explanatory, exploratory and
descriptive (Lewis, 2015). The secondary research will be conducted on the basis of
descriptive research design method where it involves qualitative research design. This
type of research design will help to depict the participants in effective way. On the
contrary, explanatory research design will not be adopted in this study as it aids to
explain facts that occur in collective manner. In addition to this, exploratory research
design will also not be integrated while conducting this research as it involves
investigation of situation for providing insights about the research topic (Nassaji, 2015).
Research Approach-There are two types of research approaches namely- inductive
approach and deductive approach. Deductive approach is basically concerned with
hypothesis development on the basis of existing theories and designing of research
strategies for hypothesis testing. This approach formulates hypothesis in terms of
operation and proposed relationship between particular variables. The testing of
hypothesis is done with implementation of appropriate methods. On the contrary,
inductive approach is concerned with particular observations to wider theories. This
approach formulates tentative hypothesis and develops conclusions based on this
hypothesis. For this study, deductive approach will be integrated as it is concerned with
hypothesis construction and its validity testing. It also connects with existing theories and
designing of strategies for hypothesis testing (Hair et al., 2015).
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