Argumentative Essay on Managing Under Uncertainty in Business

This argumentative essay, submitted by a student, explores the proposition that technology has no role in decision-making within turbulent business environments. The essay begins by defining decision-making and its challenges under uncertainty, where managers often lack complete and reliable information. It then presents arguments both for and against the proposition, drawing on various decision-making theories, such as the rational and bounded rationality models. The essay highlights the importance of judgment, rationality, and knowledge in decision-making, especially when data is unreliable. It discusses how technology, while useful in certain environments, can lead to incorrect outcomes in uncertain situations. Conversely, the essay acknowledges that technology can assist by analyzing past trends and supporting rational decision-making. The essay also considers the influence of factors like manager age on decision-making preferences. The conclusion suggests that rational decision-making under uncertainty is dependent on multiple factors, with technology's reliability being debatable. The essay references various academic sources to support its arguments, providing a comprehensive analysis of the topic.

Running head: MANAGING UNDER UNCERTAINTY
ARGUMENTATIVE ESSAY: MANAGING UNDER UNCERTAINTY
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author note:

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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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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

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to the business problem. However, when the environment is turbulent, chances are much higher
that the Power BI (business intelligence) tools generate a completely wrong outcome based on
incorrect information, and if the outcome is considered during decision making, then that would
drastically affect the business performance (Park, El Sawy & Fiss, 2017). Hence, in an uncertain
environment, managers should rely primarily on their judgment, rationality, knowledge and
decision making theories to perform the critical job of decision making. As mentioned by
Tuckett & Nikolic (2017), the conviction narrative theory (CNT) is useful in such cases as it
allows the managers to create preferred narratives of the results of their planned actions and their
impacts on the business. The authors also highlighted that integrated and divided emotional
contexts are used for evaluating the narratives. Thus, emotional capabilities can be utilized to
understand the uncertain business environment and decisions can be made efficiently using CNT.
Arguments against the proposition
The modern business environment is often turbulent and it is characterized by rapid
changes in the technology, increased globalization, dynamic resources and capabilities, and
dynamic market structure and demands (Mufudza, 2018). These factors have affected the
conventional competitiveness in the market, and this type of business environment requires much
flexible strategic solutions for adapting to the uncertain and rapidly changing situations. The
author also highlighted that technologies play a major role in assessing the dynamic
competencies and capabilities required for meeting the needs of continuously evolving and
uncertain business environment. Technology often helps the managers to make some choices that
create capability differentials among some firms and that makes some firms more adaptive and
flexible than others in an uncertain situation (Mufudza, 2018).

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According to Bolisani & Bratianu (2017), for efficient decision making in a business, the
integration of technology and knowledge is essential and these combined process can be defined
as knowledge strategy planning. In case of rational decision making, technology can provide the
useful aid by providing structured techniques for assessing the available information along with
the rationality and knowledge of the managers. The decisions based on the judgment of the
managers are supported by statistical analysis, which leads to more efficient decision making
process.
For rational decision making, technology has been useful in understanding and analyzing
the past trends of the businesses that were observed in different types of business environment,
certain or uncertain. As stated by Kauffman, Liu & Ma (2015), the business environment
uncertainties include market, consumer and regulatory responses, IT-driven changes in the
transactional and operational performance, market competition, technology standards and future
conditions of the market. All these factors have a significant effect on organizations’ willingness
for adopting to the turbulence. Hence, investment experience, traditional capital budgeting, and
intuition of the managers have not been very effective in case of IT investment decision-making.
However, it has been observed that application of technologies have resulted in more efficient
and rational choices made by the managers for businesses operating in the IT industries. Past
trend analysis has been more accurate by applying technology, which helped in more efficient
judgment by the managers.
Discussion around the proposition
Laine & Galkina (2017) highlighted the impact of the effectuation and causation in the
process of decision making in the context of uncertain business environment of Russian SMEs.

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The authors explained that as the business natures are different, the managers should implement
different rationality or logic to address the decision making issues. It has been observed in the
context of the Russian SMEs that decision making process involved both causation and
effectuation and the uncertain environment boosted the effectuation. This effectuation process
involved two performance implications that are contradictory, namely, survival effectuation and
opportunity-driven effectuation. In this process, the SMEs in Russia implemented knowledge
and technology as per the uncertainty level and nature of business, however, the study did not
highlight that in different economic conditions, such as in a different country, the business
environment would be different and the rational decision making process might not involve the
causation and effectuation process.
According to Sproten et al. (2018), age of the managers affected decision making under
uncertain business environment. The authors found through an experimental study that age
manipulated the choices made by the managers while handling issues in a turbulent business
environment. It was observed that while the younger managers preferred to integrate technology
with their knowledge and judgment, the older adults preferred their intuition and experience
more than the technology in uncertain business environments. The older adults were also found
to be more risk averse than the young adults. The study concluded that age affects the decision
making processes as well the choices made by the managers under a turbulent business
environment.
Conclusion
From the essay it can be concluded that there are quite a few arguments in favor as well
as against the proposition that technology is not an important factor in case of decision making

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under uncertain business environment. It has been found from various studies that on one hand,
technology might lead to inaccurate outcome for the business problem as the information under
turbulent business environment is majorly inaccurate, inadequate, incomplete and unreliable, and
on the other hand, it has also been found from the studies that technology is beneficial for
assessing the past trends, which assists in rational and intuition based decision making by the
managers. The usage of technology is again influenced by age of the managers where the older
generation prefers to depend more on the intuition than on the technology while dealing with
turbulent business environment. Thus, it can be stated that rational decision making under
uncertainty is dependent on many factors, however, technology does not appear to be one of the
most reliable factors.

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References
Beard, R. W. (2018). Decision Making Under Uncertainty: Theory and Application
[Bookshelf]. IEEE Control Systems Magazine, 38(6), 114-115.
Black, K. (2019). Business statistics: for contemporary decision making. John Wiley & Sons.
Bolisani, E., & Bratianu, C. (2017). Knowledge strategy planning: an integrated approach to
manage uncertainty, turbulence, and dynamics. Journal of Knowledge Management.
DOI: 10.1108/ JKM-02-2016-0071
Kauffman, R. J., Liu, J., & Ma, D. (2015). Technology investment decision-making under
uncertainty. Information Technology and Management, 16(2), 153-172. DOI:
10.1007/s10799-014-0212-2
Laine, I., & Galkina, T. (2017). The interplay of effectuation and causation in decision making:
Russian SMEs under institutional uncertainty. International Entrepreneurship and
Management Journal, 13(3), 905-941. DOI: 10.1007/s11365-016-0423-6
Mintz, A. (Ed.). (2016). Integrating Cognitive and Rational Theories of Foreign Policy Decision
Making: The Polyheuristic Theory of Decision. Springer.
Mufudza, T. (2018). Dynamic Strategy in a Turbulent Business Environment. In Strategic
Management-a Dynamic View. IntechOpen.
Newbert, S., & Craig, J. B. (2017). Moving beyond socioemotional wealth: Toward a normative
theory of decision making in family business. Family Business Review, 30(4), 339-346.

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Park, Y., El Sawy, O. A., & Fiss, P. (2017). The role of business intelligence and communication
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Sproten, A. N., Diener, C., Fiebach, C. J., & Schwieren, C. (2018). Decision making and age:
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Experimental Economics, 76, 43-54. DOI: 10.1016/j.socec.2018.07.002
Tuckett, D., & Nikolic, M. (2017). The role of conviction and narrative in decision-making under
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