Assignment:
Using the Internet, search for a business whose primary purpose is to help other companies make better decisions. In your search be careful to look for the term "decision making," "improving decisions," or "decision analysis" and then look beyond the businesses home webpage for information that can help you address the questions below. If you find you cannot answer the project questions you may want to expand your search.
Once you have identified the company you want to discuss and analyze use information from the company's website as well as reviews of that company from other sources (this may require additional research) to answer the following questions:
1. Identify the company (by name) and explain (in your own words, paraphrasing from the information you've researched) their primary purpose or mission. Don't simply copy the company's mission statement.
2. What services or products are offered that are designed to help other businesses improve their decision making? Select one product or service from your list and describe how that product or service is designed to help improve decision making (if you don't think it will help improve decision making you may want to select another product or service)?
3. Will this product or service help other decision makers impact how decisions are "framed"? If so, how?"
You are the Director of Human Resources for a prosperous Travel Agency "Destination Adventure!" The company has been so successful that in the past two years the number of employees within your company has tripled and many of the company policies need to be changed. After a recent review you've discovered one of those is the company "performance appraisal/performance evaluation" program.
It appears many managers and supervisors are being inconsistent in the way they rate or evaluate their employees. You want to identify and head off any potential problems.
Your preliminary analysis has discovered it's not a process or administrative issue but the way in which your managers and supervisors rate and measure their employee's performance. Before you can take any corrective actions (training, etc.) it will be important for you to do two things; (1) identify specific problems & (2) come up with solutions to those problem to prevent them from reoccurring,
Your objective is to prepare a research paper using the assigned readings from our textbook in this Unit (chapters 1-4 and chapter 6), the full-text database in the AIU Library, and/or other internet resources to address the following:
1. Identify and describe a minimum of 3 problems, relating to decision making that occur when managers complete performance reviews. Since the focus of our class is on decision making focus on problems that relate to decision issues in your findings. Be sure you identify each problem separately (don't put all your findings in a single large block paragraph).
2. Provide specific suggestions for each of the problems you identified so that supervisors can eliminate or reduce each of the problems identified. Try to avoid "general" recommendations as they rarely cover or help correct all the problems you will identify.
You were asked to observe a recent sales meeting between Dawn, (a production manager at your company) and a sales representative from "Widgets R Us". Widgets R Us recently sold your company a major piece of production equipment and now wants to see your company add on options and services for that same piece of equipment.
The salesperson has come prepared and shows you and Dawn a flashy video showing the advantages of adding the additional items and services. Dawn is impressed by the assertions made in the video, particularly those relating to additional cost savings, but is concerned about the additional price of the options and services. The salesperson approaches the topic of "cost" with great skill explaining that "While the initial investment may seem rather steep, I think you'll find over the life of the equipment that it averages out to about $.75 a day. I think you'll find that's less than the cost of a can of soda a day. Isn't the potential for greater efficiencies and possible cost savings worth the cost of a daily can of soda?"
Dawn, upon hearing this, admits that this sounds reasonable and agrees to purchase the additional options and service.
As the observer your objective is to prepare a research paper addressing the decision making in this situation. Your paper should address and discuss the following:
1. Identify how Dawn "framed" her decision. You may want to outline or flowchart her thought process (a way of identifying her decision frame).
2. What factors would have led Dawn to come to a different decision (in other words an alternative "frame")
3. What do you believe are the implications of "framing" on our judgments and on our attempts to influence others? Are there moral considerations? Why or why not?