How do decision makers or more precisely managers make quick but high-quality strategic choices? Decision making is a seemingly simple title for a text or study to cover, after all, we all make decisions at every moment in our lives, from the mundane choices of "what will I wear tonight?" to more difficult decisions about “where will I get my higher education degree?”. However, managers face these dilemmas on grounds that would affect the entire organization, including its employees, customers, suppliers, and so on. Decision making is one of the key strategic aspects of an organization's path to success. The chapter of the book begins by explaining that every decision made by a manager follows a process that begins with the identification of the problem that could represent an obstacle in achieving an organizational goal, the next step is to identify the decision criteria relevant to solving the problem , assign weights for the criteria. Once this is done, a manager must find alternatives and analyze them based on the criteria. The last important step would be to select the best alternative, implement it, and then evaluate the results to see if the problem is solved. Of course, for a manager to be successful, he or she must be rational, meaning that the choices made must be logical and consistent. The manager should not include any subjectivity in his decisions and should make them in the best interests of the organization and its objectives. However, to have a more realistic approach to decision making, managers are encouraged to satisfice (accept solutions that are “good enough”), simply because managers' rationality is limited by their ability to process all the information related to the alternatives. However, not all decisions tell us that, to be successful in today's world, organizations “must adopt procedures that manage complexity” (Courtney, 2001). Furthermore, more than ever, managers now need to build an organization that can detect contingencies to adapt to the ever-changing environment and just-in-time operations. As is evident from today's successful and reliable organizations, certain characteristics are present in all of them: all of these organizations embrace complexity, rely on front-line experts for critical decisions, know how to handle unexpected circumstances and anticipate the impossible, and above all; none of these organizations take their success for granted or are fooled by current profits. The prize currently moves fast and keeps pace, optimal decisions are irrelevant if they take too long to prepare or formulate.
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