Decision making
the process by which managers respond to opportunities and threats by analyzing options and making determinations about specific organizational goals and courses of action.
Programmed decision making
routine, virtually automatic decision making that follows established rules or guidelines.
Non-programmed decision making
non-routine decision making that occurs in response to unpredictable opportunities and threats.
Intuition
feelings, beliefs, and hunches that come readily to mind, require little effort and information gathering, and result in on the spot decisions.
Reasoned judgment
a decision that takes time and effort to make and results from careful information gathering, generation of alternatives, and evaluation of alternatives.
Classical decision-making model
a prescriptive approach to decision making based on the assumption that the decision maker can identify and evaluate all possible alternatives and their consequences and rationally choose the most appropriate course of action.
Optimum decision
the most appropriate decision in light of what managers believe to be the most desirable future consequences for the organization.
Administrative model
an approach to decision making that explains why decision making is inherently uncertain and risky and why managers usually make satisfactory rather than optimum decisions.
Bounded rationality
Cognitive limitations that constrain one's ability to interpret, process, and act on information.
Risk
the degree of probability that the possible outcomes of a particular course of action will occur.
Uncertainty
unpredictability
Ambiguous information
information that can be interpreted in multiple and often conflicting ways.
Satisficing
searching for and choosing an acceptable, or satisfactory, response to problems and opportunities, rather than trying to make the best decision.
Groupthink
a pattern of faulty and biased decision making that occurs in groups whose members strive for agreement among themselves at the expense of accurately accessing information relevant to a decision.
Devil's advocacy
critical analysis of a preferred alternative, made in response to challenges raised by a group member who, playing the role of devil's advocate, defends unpopular or opposing alternatives for the sake of argument.
Organizational learning
the process through which managers seek to improve employees desire and ability to understand and manage the organization and its task environment.
Learning organization
an organization which managers try to maximize the potential for organizational learning to take place.
Creativity
a decision maker's ability to discover original and novel ideas that lead to feasible alternative courses of action.
Innovation
the implementation of creative ideas in an organization.
Production blocking
a loss of productivity in brainstorming sessions due to the unstructured nature of brainstorming.
Nominal group technique
a decision-making technique in which group members write down ideas and solutions to the whole group, and discuss and then rank the alternatives.
Delphi technique
a decision-making technique in which group members do not meet face to face but respond in writing to questions posed by the group leader
Entrepreneur
an individual who notices opportunities and decides how to mobilize the resources necessary to produce new and improved goods and services.
Intraprenuer
a manager, scientist, or researcher who works inside an organization and notices opportunities to develop new or improved products and better ways to make them.
Entrepreneurship
the mobilization of resources to take advantage of an opportunity to provide customers with new of improved goods and services.
Product champion
a manager who takes "ownership" of a project and provides the leadership and vision that take a product from the idea stage to the final customer
Skunkworks
a group of intraprenuers who are deliberately separated from the normal operation of an organization and encourage them to devote all their attention to developing new products.