Planning and Decision Making

Question 1

Define Planning

Answer 1

Planning is identifying a goal and deciphering a method to achieve it.

Question 2

What are the Benefits of Planning

Answer 2

Intensifies effort

Encourages Persistence, meaning working harder for long period.

Directs Behaviour, plans encourage managers and employees to direct their persistent efforts towards activities that help accomplish their goals and away from activities that don’t.

Helps Focus on Task Strategies

Question 3

What are the Drawbacks of Planning?

Answer 3

It may prevent change to due to the strict nature and need to adhere to plans. Therefore they fail to see that their plans aren’t working and that their goals need to change.

May fail if there are incorrect assumptions that are made throughout planning, this then creates a false sense of certainty .

Poorly implemented if the planners are detached from the implementation of plans.

Timely and costly

Question 4

Explain the step of planning: Setting SMART goals

Answer 4

Setting S.M.A.R.T goals, theses are goals that are specific, measurable, attainable/achievable, realistic and timely. To direct behaviour and increase effort, goals need to be specific and challenging. This creates a standard for which success can be measured.

Question 5

Explain the step of planning: Committing to goals

Answer 5

Committing to goals through encouraging participation in goal setting, making goals public and management showing support for workers goals. Goal commitment can be defined as determination to achieve a goal. An approach to attempt to achieve goal commitment is to set goals collectively, therefore employees may be more motivated to achieve.

Question 6

Explain the step of planning: Action Plans

Answer 6

Action plans to accomplish goals. An action plan lists the specific steps, people, resources and time period for accomplishing a goal.

Question 7

Explain the step of planning: Tracking Progress

Answer 7

Tracking progress toward goal achievement by providing workers with regular performance feedback. There are two processes for which a goal can be tracked. The first is to set proximal goals and distal goals. Proximal goals are short-term or sub-goals. Whereas distal goals are long-term or primary goals. The second method is to gather and provide performance feedback. This allows for adjustment as well as assurance.

Question 8

Explain the step of planning: Flexibility

Answer 8

Keeping options open, ensuring flexibility. A method of obtaining flexibility is to instil options-based planning. This method is to keep options open by making small investments in many plans. Then when the successful plans emerge, a larger investment is made with the less successful plans being discounted.

Question 9

How can plans be effective regarding the levels of management

Answer 9

The plans made at a certain level of an organisation should be supported by all levels of management.
For goals to be effective the plans made at all levels of management should be in alignment and support each other. Further there are different plans for which each level of management creates.

Question 10

What should top management do to make plans more effective?

Answer 10

Top management should aim to create strategic plans. These should establish an organisation vision and mission. Top management plans should clarify how the company is going to serve customers and overcome competitors. Top management are also required to create a vision. A vision is a statement of a company’s purpose or reason for existing. A vision should be widely consistent with a companies beliefs and values. The from the vision, a mission will surface. The mission will be a more specific goal that rings together effort of the company, stretches and challenges an organisation. Often a mission will possess a finish line and a time frame.

Question 11

What should middle management do to make plans more effective?

Answer 11

Middle managers address tactical plans, those involving directing behaviour, effort and priorities. Tactical plans tend to plan for the next six months to two years.

Question 12

Explain Management by Objectives

Answer 12

Management by objectives (MBO) is a four step process for which managers and employees which includes:
○ Talking about potential goals
○ Select goals that are challenging attainable and consistent with the company’s overall goals
○ Developing tactical plans jointly that lead to fulfilling goals and objectives
○ Meeting on a regular basis to review progress

Question 13

What should lower management do to make plans more effective?

Answer 13

Lower-level managers create operational plans and these guide daily activities. These plans range from period of thirty days to six months.

Question 14

Explain single use operational plans

Answer 14

Single Use Plans: These are plans that deal with one time only events.

Question 15

Explain standing operational plans

Answer 15

Standing Plans (policies, procedures, and rules and regulations): Used on a regular basis to manage frequent events. Standing plans are said to be time saving for managers. A procedure is a standing plan that indicates the specific steps taken in response to a particular event. Rules and regulations are standing plans that described how a particular action should be performed, in response to a particular event. A policy is a standing plan that indicates the general course of action in response to a particular event/situation.

Question 16

Explain budget operational plans

Answer 16

○ Budgets: A qualitative plan for which managers decide how to allocate available money to best accomplish company goals.

Question 17

What are the six steps in the rational decision making process?

Answer 17

Identify and define the problem
Define the decision making criteria
Weigh the Importance
Generate Alternate Course of Action
Evaluate
Compute Optimal Value

Question 18

Explain the Identify Process of the rational decision making process

Answer 18

Identify and define the problem: A problem is said to exist when there is a difference between what is wanted and the situation that is actually being faced. For a problem to be solved, managers need to first be aware of the problem and want to solve it. Further once aware of the problem managers must be able to fix it with the skills and resources that they have.

Question 19

Explain the define the decision criteria to judge alternatives of the rational decision making process

Answer 19

Decision criteria is the standards that are used to guide judgements and decisions.

Question 20

Explain the weight the importance of each decision criteria of the rational decision making process

Answer 20

The decision maker is always required to provide an initial ranking. To estimate the comparison absolute comparisons are often used. Absolute comparisons is a process in which each decision criteria is compared to a standard or ranked against its own merits. Another method used is relative comparisons, a process in which each decision criterion is compared directly to every other criterion.

Question 21

Explain the generate alternative courses of action of the rational decision making process

Answer 21

The objective at this step is to generate as many alternatives as possible

Question 22

Explain the evaluate of the rational decision making process

Answer 22

Evaluate each alternative against each criteria

Question 23

Explain the compute the optimal value for each alternative course of action of the rational decision making process

Answer 23

Computing this decision involves multiplying the weight for each criterion (step 3) by the rating for each criterion (step 5) and then adding up those scores for each alternative course of action that was generated (step 4). Often managers instead of maximising and choosing the best alternative, they will satisfy and choose alternative that is ‘good enough’.

Question 24

Explain bounded rationality

Answer 24

Bounded Rationality acknowledges the limitations of rational decision making.

Availability of resources
Incomplete and imperfect information
Decision making capabilities.

Question 25

Explain the advantages of a group member input into decision making

Answer 25

Multiple perspectives
More information
Diversity of knowledge and experience
Member commitment to the solutions
Better solutions than individual decision makers

Question 26

Explain the disadvantages of a group member input into decision making

Answer 26

Groupthink: Occurs in highly cohesive groups who feel pressure to agree with one another so that that group can come to a solution. This leads to a limited number of solutions and restricts discussion of other considered solutions. The group leader may have expressed a strong preference for a particular decision, group members may be of a similar backgrounds or the group may not have a plan in place for dealing with problems and exploring alternatives.

Slowness: To prevent this it s suggested that meetings have a clear agenda, within office hours and have an assigned note-taker

Discussions that are dominated by just a few individuals: This restricts the consideration of different problems and proposed solutions.

Unfelt responsibility for decisions.

Question 27

Cognitive Conflict

Answer 27

Cognitive conflict leads to good group decisions. This type of conflict surrounds problem and issue related differences of opinion. It is characterized by a willingness to examine, compare and reconcile those differences to produce the best possible solution.

Question 28

Affective/Emotional Conflict

Answer 28

Affective and emotional conflict can hinder good group decisions. This type of conflict refers to the emotional reactions by individuals leading to disagreements becoming personal rather than professional.

Question 29

Explain the technique to improve decision making nominal group:

Answer 29

A technique that begins and ends with group members quietly writing down and evaluating ideas to be shared with the group.

Question 30

Explain the technique to improve decision making: Delphi Technique

Answer 30

The members of a panel of experts respond to questions to each other until they reach an agreement on an issue. Panel members are not required to be brought together in the one physical place, therefore are more likely to participate. Then open an open ended questionnaire is created for the experts, and then the responses from them are analyzed, summarized and fed-back until an agreement is reached.

Question 31

Explain the technique to improve decision making: Brainstorming

Answer 31

Brainstorming is a technique in which group members build on other’s ideas to generate as many alternative solutions as possible. In brainstorming all ideas are acceptable, criticism is not allowed and more ideas the better. Electronic brainstorming allows the face-face disadvantages of brainstorming to be overcome. These can include production blocking (having to wait for another to express their idea before you can express yours) and evaluation apprehension (fear of what others will think of your ideas).

Question 32

What is strategy?

Answer 32

A strategy is an on-going process. It is a way of thinking about a business, assessing its strengths, diagnosing its weaknesses and envisioning possibilities.

Question 33

Explain the five P’s

Answer 33

○ Plan: Intended course of action
○ Ploy: Trick/manoeuvre to get advantage over a competitor.
○ Pattern: Can emerge from behaviours, intended or not, which follow plans or other management action
○ Position: Locates the organisation in its environment market or niche
Perspective: Looking inside the organisation and defining its ‘personality’ or how it perceives the world.

Question 34

Change

Answer 34

→ Change is an alteration in existing circumstances.
Change can have a positive or negative affect on an organisation and often is left up to managers to foresee and overcome.

Question 35

Organisational Innovation

Answer 35

Organisational innovation is the successful implementation of creative ideas in an organisation. It is designed to bring about improvements within an organisation.

Question 36

Globalisation

Answer 36

Globalisation is the accelerating, deepening and broadening process of integration and connectedness affecting the movement of goods, services, communications and ideas between different countries.

Question 37

Global Business

Answer 37

Global business is the buying and selling of goods and services by people from different countries.