Question:
As mentioned in this week's overview, the quantitative approach to decision modeling using spreadsheets helps with many of today's business problems, such as how many inventory items to order based on a given demand forecast or the amount of money to allocate for important projects in the current year's budget. IBM, for instance, has used the management science approach for decision making to improve the productivity of its sales force (Balakrishnan, Render, & Stair, 2013, p. 4). As a result, the company expects to increase revenue by several hundreds of millions of dollars each year based on analytical decision models. However, this quantitative approach to decision making does not account for qualitative factors such as perceptions and opinions.
How do you think qualitative factors might influence the managerial decision-making process? For example, could one use them to evaluate approving and funding projects to determine their return on investment and exposure to risk? What are other examples?