Decision making is not only the headache of management rather all of us make decisions. We daily decide about minor issues. The essential characteristics of all decisions are:
1. Objective
2. Alternative at the disposal and
3. Influencing factors
Once these characteristics are known one can think of improving the characteristics so as to improve upon the decision itself. Let us consider a situation where a decision concerns spending summer vacations at a hill resort. The next problem may be to decide the mode of conveyance from amongst the alternatives train bus and a taxi.
At the first level of decision making, bus is chosen as the mode of conveyance just by intuition ( may be at random). At the second level of decision making the three conveyances are compared and it is decided qualitatively that the bus will be preferred since it is less time consuming compared to the train and cheaper as compared to taxi. At the third level of decision making the three alternative are compared and it is suggested that the bus will be chosen as it will be taking only half the time taken by train and shall be 40 % less costlier than the taxi.
Although outcome of all these decisions is the same one can easily judge the quality of each decisions. We many brand the first decision as bad since it is highly emotional while we may call the second decision as good since it is scientific though qualitative. The third decision is doubtlessly the best as it is scientific as well as quantitative.