L1: Goals, Uncertainty and Information

Question 1

What kind of questions arise when creating your own business?

Answer 1

Raw materials?
Workers?
Production facility?
Production process?
Getting product to market?
Buyers?

Question 2

What is “uncertainty” in terms of this class?

Answer 2

What you don’t know but need to know in order to achieve your goals

Question 3

What are questions that arise when pondering uncertainties?

Answer 3

How does nature work?
How do things develop in a social setting?
What do people need?
What are people’s intentions?

Question 4

How do organizations respond to uncertainties?

Answer 4

They create devices to resolve them. There is a different device for each type

Question 5

What is “information” in the context of organizations?

Answer 5

Content needed to reduce uncertainties

Question 6

______ are in the future. _________ are what you need to know but don’t. __________ resolves the uncertainties.

Answer 6

GOALS are in the future. UNCERTAINTIES are what you need to know but don’t. INFORMATION resolves the uncertainties.

Question 7

Setting goals (predicting the future) and acting on the prediction (means) make up deployment. Doing this requires complete rationality. What are the 3x departures organizations oftentimes make from rationality?

Answer 7

1) Imperfect information
2) Limited ability
3) Bias

Question 8

What do we call residual uncertainties once all information available has been obtained?

Answer 8

Risks

Question 9

Information is “news”. What are some properties of information?

Answer 9

1) Unit of analysis
2) Level of detail
3) Time dimension
4) Trustworthiness
5) Expertise domain